take my breath away
by owakana
Summary: Because a family that deals with problems together, stays together. (or: Tokiwa thinks running away from the problem is the best solution—her husband and son try to adapt to her mindset. They all fail.) [self-insert!mother; si-oc]
1. the frog in the well

**note:** _i edited this! there are some additional information and changed info!_ this was supposed to be a plot for another fandom but i realized how much better it will be if i used it for boku no hero academia instead. i really, really want to make this a feel good story but i somehow cannot do that and i always end up with some more angst and tragedy. i'm trying my best to make this as light-hearted as possible! i ended up with this plot when i realized that there are other si-ocs out there who can actually avoid the plot because they were born in the wrong time period, and this is exactly my interpretation of it. and there won't be oc/canon pairings since the pairing is already decided and it will be oc/oc since i'm trying my best to emphasize how much the oc is avoiding the plot and avoiding to change it but until, yeah, this happens. i hope you enjoy reading this as much as i enjoy writing this! i know i should update my other stories but i can't help it.

i was writing the second paragraph and i realized that _oh no_ , isn't this supposed to be a feel-good story? haha, on a second thought, it won't be one. i'm too . . . used to writing tragedies and drama. if i were to decide a faceclaim for tokiwa, it would be handa emi! i love her so much, she's just so adorable and everything i would want tokiwa to look like.

 **summary:** because a family that deals with problems together, stays together. (or: tokiwa thinks running away from the problem is the best solution—her husband and son adapts her mindset and fails. she fails with them too.) [mother!si-oc] [self-insert] [fix-it]

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

 _tokiwa is not tokiwa but she thinks it's okay._

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

 _This time_ , she thinks when she realizes how the sky is still the same blue that the ocean mirrors and no longer the taunting cold of the blank—the _void_ — _lacuna_ —the dark-thing that surrounded her once upon a time, _I can be remembered_.

Imagawa Tokiwa dances along the songs of the cicadas with her bare feet touching the prickly grass. She is three years old (again) and she is wild and free, and there is nothing holding her back in this tragedy she calls a blessing from above. The miracle of souls, broken and aching but still whole souls, being born to a fresh new body, a body more free and more alive that it has ever been, without towering figures and sneering lips, without the weight of the world forcing itself on its shoulders, without the constant fear of the demeaning silhouette of a man and a woman, of glass-like beings with more strength than she will ever have—she is free. _Alive_ and breathing the same oxygen, blood pumping her veins, keeping her alive, her blood is still in her body and there are no _no no none there are_ no bruises littered all over her body, no marks of fingerprints digging against her supple skin, no scars no _nothing_ for she is brand new, alive and free, and she is breathing and well. She knows there are too many stars to count with all the fingers in the world, too many unspoken secrets of the world, and too many stories being sung by the midnight sky and _oh oh oh_ —she may no longer be _it_ (the name that she fails to catch but she thinks she does not want to remember it too) but she is Imagawa Tokiwa now, alive and alive and no longer bleeding out.

Her name is written with two characters and her mother (the _new_ one, the one with a soft smile and dazzling eyes) whispers to her the meaning of her new name, her new life, her new identity. She has a normal family now—Imagawa Sumire is the average height for a Japanese woman (she questions this later because because because _this_ is not the Japan she knows) with soft outlines and youthful palms, not even the slightest bit of calloused despite doing all the household work for the family and her father, her father who does not act like a dictator of the home that _it_ never loved. Instead, Imagawa Yuuichirou is ever-smiling with silvery white hair and he holds the suns in his palms.

The world smells like dirt after rain, the aftereffect of everything that has happened.

 _This time_ , she thinks again after days and days of wandering within the country she knows like the back of her hand (except she does not), _I can be free._

Tokiwa realizes she has a brother, an older one who smiles so wide that it looks like it hurts but he loves her, he loves her in a way the sun loves the stars, loves the children of the same sky it grew up under, and _woah_ , she has never had a brother, only older men and women eying her like a piece of meat—like a prize, like something to be used to climb higher and higher to the ladder they call hierarchy. She hates them. ( _It_ hates them.) But this brother is the brother who has loved her the moment their mother explains the reason of the rounded stomach that weighs heavily on her body, a sister, a sister, and now she has a brother. A guardian deity just for her.

Imagawa Toushirou is all smiles and sharp edges, raw knuckles and bandages littering his knees. Imagawa Toushirou is all power and protection, and he is her first knight in shining armor (her first in both lives because once upon a time, _it_ taught itself to save _itself_ so _it_ will not need to be saved, _it_ learned to stop pleading for help) and her first monster.

She calls it monster because monsters snap you back to reality, dragging you by your ankles, pulling you away from rainbows and butterflies, from the fantasy you keep on clinging to. _Who will save her when her savior is a monster too?_ Toushirou's bones are noisy under his skin and before he knows it, before she knows it, before everybody knows it, bones burst from his skin, his pale pale pale arms push out the bones that are supposed to stay under his skin his muscles what _is happening what what_ and his bones are silver in color, hard as steel, and his eyes widen and it is not because of fear, instead, he rejoices as he rushes out from her room she painted pale yellow. His shouts echo throughout their home.

"Okaasan!" She hears his shrieks. "I got my quirk!"

They prepare meals and throw a small celebration, as if bones bursting from the skin is something to celebrate about, as if the noise of creaking bones, joints hitting joints, bones scraping against one another as it pushes out and out and something silvery is peaking and _hello_ —Tokiwa has been scared many times, thanks to _it_ who gives her all the fears she has right now. Little Toushirou is heard groaning and moaning under the sheets in the middle of the night but no one makes a move to address this because it's normal. It really is. "Some children get fevers when they first get their quirks, Toki-chan," her mother explains as if superpowers and children whining because of a pain that is not supposed to be there is normal, "Mama got one when she was four, and your Papa became slightly anemic. But _no pain, no gain_ , right?"

Tokiwa feels excitement bubbling from the pit of her stomach— _quirks_ , she squeals but _it_ screams and screams and screams so much that it almost hurts. _Its_ words are unintelligible and sometimes, _it_ cries for powerless boys begging for power that is never supposed to be needed to be a hero. _Man doesn't need wings to fly_ , the age-old something in her head whispers, _then why do they need superpowers to become heroes?_

She finds herself scanning through magazines upon magazines, channels through channels but she does not find what she is looking for. She does not find a seven-footer blonde with shadowed features and brilliant smiles, not even flaming heroes clad in blue, but instead, finds glimpses of white suits and turbo boots, a woman with the smile, the strength, the speed but not quite that she is looking for. _It_ names it all with an almost fanatic glee before crumbling into nothingness, whispering tales of ice and fire, explosions looking far from the beauty of fireworks, and green flashes of weakness yet so so so much power.

She dreams and dreams as _it_ tells her more and more stories of wannabe heroes and teachers sacrificing their lives for children who still cannot take the business seriously. And before she knows it, the _thing_ separating her from _it_ dissolves into nothingness. She learns _its_ name and adapts it instantly. The tales become too real (forcing it to be real). The tales become too authentic.

Imagawa Tokiwa is Imagawa Tokiwa. Once upon a time, she wasn't.

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

They call it clairvoyance—this quirk of hers.

She does not voice how far she sees, does not tell anyone of the children far from being born. Here, she does not see the Flaming Hero, Endeavor just yet or the World's something-something of Peace, All Might. Not yet. Maybe in a few years she will but not today. Not in a few years, but in a decade, she will. For now, she hints her mother and father of a number or two in the lottery, smiles warily to her brother, whispering to him about surprise quizzes and laughs when he rushes to his room to study—she has it all planned out, details kept closely to her chest and numbers and computations of dates and dates, more and more numbers like chicken scratch on a piece of notebook that almost looks like Hello Kitty, and Tokiwa ignores that _of course_ Hello Kitty does not exist because this is not the Japan she knows.

 _It_ tell her that the mind is a very interesting thing—like that movie _it_ loves; about a man with two dozens of personalities all compressed in a weak, pathetic, and scarily broken body—the power of belief is too powerful to be taken lightly. As her mind seeks for an individuality, the assurance that she will never stop seeing the future, the truth (the destruction of mankind as they submit more to the power that they worship), the reality of this false world, she receives the Quirk she believes she has. Her smiling mother and father are confused for a moment; where did clairvoyance come from a father with stronger bodily resistance and a mother who can bend small steels? They take her Quirk to a stride as her brother smiles at her with the same smile she sees on his face whenever he brags about the Quirk that disturbs her.

("Toki, Toki—we're not in Japan anymore," _it_ coos with small laughter as if saying an inside joke she doubts she will ever understand.)

Whenever her brother notices her little notebook and teases to take a peek, Tokiwa easily lets her lower lip wobble. Deception is an art learned through time and there are few masters of it. Tokiwa learns to cry on cue and to laugh on the things she frowns at. She knows how to keep secrets, keep everything she knows to herself. Her over confidence over her abilities lasts twelve years, which is a lot longer than she expects but she cannot help but look at the boy with fear and _no no no_ —this is not happening.

Ueda Masaomi from her class usually hangs out with his own circle of friends, another group of boys who talk about a bit of baseball and groan about new volumes of manga from the nearby store they pass by whenever they walk home. Tokiwa has seen his parents from time to time during parent-teacher conferences, noting their suffocating neckties and light smiles. Nice people, really. This Ueda-person in her class is smart—smarter than most boys in her class and odd, she realizes a year too late. He is too confined in his personal bubble and yet nobody seems to notice that. He skips swimming classes during Physical Education and Tokiwa realizes she has no idea why. He wears the winter uniform under the scorching heat and moves at the right moment whenever his friends rough one another up.

She remembers frowning at the distance between them as she uses the eraser to wipe the blackboard clean of algebraic notations. She remembers small things; calling him over to help her with the mops ("Isn't the mop in the boy's bathroom?"), hearing him joke about not getting it herself, and out of instinct when she notices the textbooks piled next to the teachers table—she has always been a blunt person; even _it_ agrees, memories of speaking in front of a stage mingling with her thoughts—she grabs his arm, ignoring his rolled up sleeves, sees his eyes widening and—

"This isn't my first life," she suddenly says and she forces herself to _stop stop stop stop speaking_ but she continues, "this is actually my second. I died one day and then I woke up here as a three-year-old Imagawa Tokiwa—like, maybe babies can't handle adult thoughts but toddlers can? Saying I was shocked when I realized I'm in _Boku no Hero Academia_ would be an understatement. I'm also lying about how I can only see one day into the future. I know what will specifically happen after a decade, since that's where everything starts. My brother scares me sometimes. I once got excited about this world until I realized that this world is messed up in more way than one. The senpai in 3-B is really handsome but I think he likes boys. There's also Akechi-senpai but—"

Tokiwa's words finally die from her mouth when she feels Masaomi rip his arm away from her grasps.

 _Ueda Masaomi. Quirk_ , she realizes in horror, _everyone who touches him spills their secret, whether they like it or not._

It just so happens that Ueda has the worst Quirk for somebody like Tokiwa.

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

"Hey, when did _that_ happen?"

"What?"

"That."

"Is that—wait, are those two Imagawa and Ueda? When did that happen?"

"That's what I was asking, idiot."

"But I thought Imagawa likes that senpai from 3-B."

"Isn't Kurakawa-senpai gay?"

"Really?"

"Yeah, he's—stop changing the topic! That's Imagawa _and_ Ueda!"

"It's kind of surprising but not _that_ surprising, you know."

"I guess so. I mean, now that I think about it, I heard that they got assigned after class together and lots of shouting happened."

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

"So, what was I like?"

Tokiwa lifts her gaze from her coffee. (Starbucks does not exist. Instead, there is something that resembled it after thorough research about the years before the existence of Quirks. It turns out that Hello Kitty existed once upon a time but the brand disappeared gradually when _real_ , talking animals appeared. Religion—Tokiwa bites the bottom of her lip—has scarily few followers nowadays, mostly coming from the Quirkless. She reads in an article of how this world of Quirk views religion and she almost topples over and throw up. _It_ cried in the edges of her mind, wailing for the gods that _it_ worshiped. _Religion_ , the world says with clarity and assurance in its voice and _it_ cries, _was a form of coping mechanism. Man before Quirks had none to rely to and instead, created false gods to seek for a more dominant figure._ Religion is a mere excuse for festivals, thinking of tales instead of real gods.) She frowns at Ueda.

"Are you seriously asking what I think you're saying?" Tokiwa huffs.

Ueda shrugs his shoulders, biting the corner of his lip. Tokiwa identifies this habit; Ueda bites the corner of his lip, using this as an attempt to gather himself and be serious. She wonder absentmindedly when she began picking up the smallest of his habits—like running a hand through his dark hair whenever he is exhausted, or how he straightens his back whenever he lies, or maybe how he switches from his more dominant right hand to his left hand just to brag about being ambidextrous. "I mean, you said that this world is some sort of manga, right?" Ueda asks and Tokiwa remembers being so relieved, almost sobbing her eyes out, when Ueda shows her a vintage _Naruto_ and _Detective Conan_ manga. And apparently, _Pokemon_ is also treated as 'seriously vintage'. Even _Boruto_ , which came out a year before _it_ faded, is vintage. At least she still has _Naruto_ —she has no idea what she will do without it. "So what was I?—err, what will I be?"

Tokiwa snorts. "You weren't even there," she points out and Ueda frowns, "I told you, didn't I? It focused on UA students, or UA, in general. The side characters were villains, police officers, heroes, and some random appearances."

Masking his disappointment and ignoring Tokiwa's amused expressions, he scrolls down his phone and shows an article. "So apparently, Endeavor's getting popular," he comments and shows her a video of a flaming hero—without the blazing face, only flaming hair—defeating villains one after another with a handful of fire attacks. Looking at him enjoying being a hero despite his stern and forever-serious expression scares Tokiwa. She can barely recognize him with the different costume and appearance. "They say he's going to be the next Number One hero." Ueda easily catches the frown on Tokiwa's face. "I'm guessing that's not going to happen anytime soon."

" _Soon_ is an understatement," she sighs, "try two decades. All Might's probably going to be Number One in a few years."

" _All Might?_ " Ueda's eyes widen in surprise. "The lookalike of one of the American comics you have in your room?"

"Which one?" Tokiwa deadpans, only emphasizing how All Might is the collaboration of every American hero stereotype. But in the eyes of Japan and the new Quirk world, he is exotic and unexpected.

She understands the surprising lingering in Ueda's voice. At the moment, All Might is just a fresh graduate from UA with an impressive Quirk and a strange obsession over yellow and everything bright and American. "Woah, I thought All Might was just," Ueda mumbles, "some super strength guy. I mean, it's a really common Quirk, you know? I don't really understand the hype. Endeavor's got _Hellfire_. Elemental Quirks are rare—I'd expect him to be Number One. Not some..."

"One big hero stereotype?" Tokiwa offers. "A little too trying-hard, don't you think?"

"Yeah," Ueda agrees, "but I see where they're coming from too. Endeavor and All Might just graduated but they're already a ranked hero."

"Really?"

Ueda sighs, tapping his phone for a moment and eventually showing her the current hero rankings. "Endeavor's already close to the Top Ten rankings, and All Might's close to Twenty."

Tokiwa frowns. "Endeavor's almost Number Two," she whispers, "it's getting closer."

If Ueda notices how she looks like she's about to cry, he does not make a move to address it, or even comment about how pathetic she is being. Instead, he smiles almost painfully at her. "Hey, we're partners here, aren't we?" He says like he has always known this and expects her to know it too. "Lots of things are going to happen from today and onward, and I know you're too _vintage_ to be alone here."

"I managed twelve years, idiot."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't here that," Ueda replies almost immediately, "but the point is that you're not alone."

Tokiwa wonders and wonders. She snorts but reaches for Ueda's hand, grabbing it. "I know," she says—his Quirk coils around her, "don't worry. I know you're here, Ueda."

The boy looks from his hand to her. "If we're serious about this partnership, don't call me Ueda," he says.

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

Tokiwa is thirteen when Endeavor becomes the Number Two hero, All Might creeping closer and closer to the Number One position. Ueda— _Masaomi_ , as he insisted her to call him after their sudden kind-of friendship that had begun because of a volatile quirk and hand going to the wrong place—had texted her about it with a screenshot lagging afterwards.

 **not even a canon character** **[3:22PM]  
** _endeavors no. 2 like wth hes just 20_

 **not even a canon character** **[3:22 PM]  
** _when is all might gun be no. 1 ?_

 **not even a canon character** **[3:24PM]  
** _whatre u gun do now ?_

She does not reply for at least an hour, too busy with a headache pinning her whole body down her bed because _it's real_ —Endeavor actually becomes the Number Two hero even when he is just a twenty-year-old man, just got out from high school. Flames burst from his palms (and Tokiwa sighs in an emotion she cannot name when she sees no signs of flaming eyes and chins, only burning burning burning costumes with pride gleaming in his eyes—this man is happy, _so so so happy_ and there is no bitterness and clue word is yet—wait a few years and it will appear) and the crowd cheers his name, calling him by the title he holds pride of and it makes Tokiwa think of how pathetic Endeavor has gotten, wondering what he felt when he realized how he has nothing against All Might and all he can rely on is the son that does not call him father. She thinks of shattered pride and unshed tears.

Endeavor, at twenty, is not married, is not the man that his children and wife fear. Instead, Endeavor at twenty is relishing the Number Two hero title, relishing the fact that he is _young_ and _strong_ and holds the flames of the civilians' hope. Today, Endeavor is a hero, a real hero with a real need to protect and to help, not just to prove to everybody (you don't need to prove yourself, it's okay, every _thing is going to be fine so please_ ) that he is not inferior to the seven-foot tall man who holds the power of seven other people in his body. Tokiwa wanders dangerously close to the Hero Killer, Stain who spits at the name of Endeavor, insisting that the only hero he acknowledges is All Might, thinks of the flames that the doctors call Hellfire.

She stares at Masaomi's last message, unsure of what to say. _What am I going to do?_ She asks and asks and asks, for once _it_ is not here to cry of the scarily close tale _it_ usually complains about. Instead, it is only her. Only her and a question lingering at the back of her head, more important than any question that has been asked for years and years of studying that has never actually been needed because _it_ died on the way home from _its_ graduation day when the man the man the man glares at her and _you're not number one why are you not number one_ and thinking about Endeavor this time, makes _it_ scream.

 _Not Number One_ , and ohoh oh—she thinks of Endeavor and how lonely he must be, how devastated he _has_ to be.

 **narutard** **[4:11PM]  
** _i think endeavors my current fave hero_

 **not even a canon character** **[4:11PM]  
** _ure weird_

 **not even a canon character** **[4:12PM]  
** _but he looks rlly happy rn_

 **not even a canon character** **[4:12PM]  
** _i guess hes kind of cool but torino is still the best_

 **narutard** **[4:12PM]  
** _idc about that old man_

 **not even a canon character [4:13PM]  
** _dont blame me if i douse endeavor w water if i see him change my contact name dammit_

 **narutard** **[4:14PM]  
** _not until you change mine_

 **not even a canon character [4:13PM]  
** _in my defense u cried when i showed u naruto_

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

"I'm not going to go to college."

Masaomi spits his drink, eyes widening at the form in Tokiwa's hands. He watches as her hands shake— _she is far from sure about this but she wants it_ , he notes as his eyes meet her gleaming ones. To say that Tokiwa is one of the smartest people he has met, regardless of previous life or not, is an understatement. She can pass Tokyo University, if she wishes so, despite her whining that she did not pass the first time around and doubts she will pass it the second time. He bites the corner of his lip. "Why?" He asks simply.

Tokiwa clears her throat and slumps herself on the seat she dragged to sit in front of Masaomi. She points to her the application always given to the senior students of high school, the one deciding where they will end up in; college or work. "I'm going to be a writer," she announces, "I'm going to be the second coming of Murakami Haruki."

"Who's that?" Masaomi automatically asks.

With an eye roll, Tokiwa huffs. "He's the one who wrote _Kafka on the Shore_ and _Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman_ ," she says but the blank look on Masaomi's face said so much about his lack of knowledge concerning one of her favorite authors, "okay, Akutagawa Ryuunosuke—the one who wrote _Spider_ _Thread_."

"I'm not . . . religious," Masaomi cringes at the term used.

"You don't need to be religious to read _Spider Thread_ , idiot," Tokiwa corrects, "how about Dazai Osamu? He wrote _No Longer Human_." Another blank look at Tokiwa immediately looks affronted. "We're going to a bookstore later."

"You do know that your choice of books can't be found in a normal bookstore right?" Masaomi asks. "It's too old. And besides, you were talking about being a writer, right? You do know that's hard. You need to go through lots of manuscripts, constantly edit it depending on the agency—and—and there's also how you're not sure if you're going to be famous or not—wait, it's not like I'm saying you don't write well; it's just that your opinions are . . . controversial."

Tokiwa grins from ear to ear. "That's exactly the beauty of it," she chirps and rises from her seat. Her smile stretches to less of a smug smile to a genuine one. She turns around to face the windows of the classroom. There is something poetic about sunset—how it disappears with a trail of colors following its farewell eagerly. "When you're controversial, people listen to you. They'll try to crack your words and contradict you every time. I never got to be who I wanted to be back then—I was too distracted being a good student that I forgot being free. I _like_ being free, Masaomi. I like writing, and telling the world how I don't like it."

She returns to face him. "When there weren't Quirks, man improvised," she says, sporting the same look of longing that Masaomi has rarely seen on her face ever since All Might became the Number One hero two years ago—Masaomi remembers that look; her eyes glazed with unshed tears, looking as if she is about to break the moment the men and women cheered for the name of something false. "Man can't fly so he built a plane. He can't swim too deep so he built a submarine. He can't go outer space so he built a rocket. Man turned his weakness to strength. Everything was always evolving back then, always a new phone within the month, always new shoes around—everything was so beautiful despite everything else. Man wanted to be better and better, regardless of what happened to everything else. Man wanted strength until—"

"It was given to him," Masaomi interrupts. He can't imagine a world without Quirks. The world Tokiwa speaks fondly of. The world she loves more than she will ever love this one.

"Right." Tokiwa smiles. "Everything depended on hardwork. _All men are born equal_ —that was what it was supposed to be until Quirks came."

Masaomi barely has any idea how the sudden stagnance of the world of Quirks affected her want (her need) to become a writer. He thinks he can grasp the idea though—Imagawa Tokiwa wants to remind the world of their forgotten past, the past where everything was moving, the past where everyone started from the bottom—the past where the blood powering your status affected nothing of your future. Thinking about it, Masaomi kind of likes that world too.

 _A world where your Quirk doesn't decide what you will be_ , he thinks and sighs. How odd it is to refer the past as another world entirely.

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

This thing they have—whatever this thing is, Tokiwa thinks that she likes it. ( _It_ does not say anything about the constant outbursts of truths from their mouth but _it_ keeps silent when the boy who fears lies comes strolling in their little world; Tokiwa thinks that maybe, just maybe, _it_ likes this thing too.) This thing—like that time when his eyes meet hers, how those eyes of his somehow always look like they are about to tell something that the world refuses to speak, the same blue against the morning light, the same blue that holds her amber ones with both hands, holding her gaze as if afraid to blink, afraid to fade away along the mist in dawn. Like that time when both of them had been rummaging through books and books about quirks ("I want to specialize in Quirk Analysis," he says with twinkling smiles.), sharing young tales of heroes and villains, wannabe vigilantes with more strength than they can ever imagine. Or like that time when Masaomi learns to control his quirk just so he can hold _hold hold_ her cold hands.

Tokiwa likes whatever they have.

She likes how she forgets _it_ and the future that she has always wanted to avoid whenever she succumbs to the scent of his warmth. There is something terrifying yet romantic about this thing of theirs; of the boy who only hears the truth upon the people he touches, of the soul who carries the secrets of the world—t _his_ is not the superficial adoration she holds to most men and woman she had once whispered the fragile words to. This something more, something that goes neck-deep and it reaches her bones to the last of her breath, choking her with a gentle hand that urges her to tell the truth and she does, when she grabs his hand without him noticing it. His eyes (blue blue so deep blue) widens at her actions, already making a move to pull it back because he knows what this quirk they call the greatest evolution of humanity can do, knows the locks gripping the young woman's words, knows it all, but he does not know.

The soul (she, _it_ , maybe _both_ ) feels his quirk thrum through her and she grabs him with both of her naked palms. "I don't know what to do," _what to change what is right what is wrong what to prioritize and what to protect what should I do_ , "I don't know—I'm scared, really scared but—you make me feel like I'm still me, you know? I don't even know what that's supposed to mean. You're so _you_ that it makes me scared. You're not even a canon character—" Masaomi's muscles relax as he lets out a breathy chuckle. "—and you're the one I'm—I'm prioritizing. I won't ever tell my parents or even Toushirou-nii the numbers to the lottery, but I think I will if you ask me. Maybe even the questions for your exam. Quirk Analysis is hard you know. I can—I'm really scared, Masaomi. You make me feel vulnerable and weak—I don't feel like I have a lifetime over you, more like the other way around and that scares me so _fucking_ much."

Tokiwa feels Masaomi moving towards her, letting her lean against his chest, his scent his warmth his existence carving its truth against her bones. "Are you asking me to marry you?" Masaomi asks and Tokiwa wonders if he's joking. They are twenty; Tokiwa refuses to go to college again and grabs a laptop and weaves her tales that _it_ whispers to her as Masaomi announces that he wants to have a degree in Quirk Analysis, pointing out that not only does it make more money but it can also help ( _her_ , is the unspoken word).

"That's all you got from that?" Tokiwa mumbles.

Masaomi leans back and lets their bodies fall on the floor, Tokiwa's knees burning from the impact. "You feel that?" He asks but does not wait for her response, instead wrapping his arms tighter around her form. "After you told me everything, I wondered if I was real, you know? I was scared that if I wasn't then is my hardwork for nothing? Then is me begging for my parents' proud smiles for nothing? I ended up picking a fight in the dojo next door. I got like three broken bones. It hurt as shit. But I thought—oh, I guess I'm alive. _This_ is real. And thinking of the future with you, thinking of what we'll do when those things finally happen makes me feel real. As if _this_ —all of these—whatever this is—it's authentic. It's here. People can actually die, and we're doing our best to not die too. It makes me feel involved and I feel like I actually matter. I want to keep doing this."

"Are you asking me to spend the rest of my life with you?" Tokiwa retorts, her voice raspy.

"So what if I am?"

"I'll think about it."

Masaomi snorts. "My parents think we're secretly married, you know," he comments.

He feels Tokiwa move from above him, rolling to his side. "Toushirou-nii will be annoyed that I'm getting married before him," she adds.

"Toushirou-san can suck it up."

"So you're really asking me to marry you?"

"Were _you_ asking me?"

Tokiwa lifts herself up with her elbows, "Yeah."

Masaomi feels his chest constrict, the sun is dancing in his chest, a pirouette from the solar flames it lets wander through its being. Masaomi feels—" _Yeah_ to what question?"

"Both."

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

 **imouto [7:02AM]  
** _im getting married_

 **kaachan** **[9:33AM]  
** _With masaomi-kun right_

 **touchan [9:34AM]  
** _What_

 **niichan [9:34AM]  
** _WHAT_

 **imouto [9:35AM]  
** _lol kaachan howd u know_

 **kaachan** **[9:35AM]  
** _Im a mother_

 **niichan** **[9:36AM]  
** _kaachan how are u taking this well_

 **niichan [9:36AM]  
** _touchan arent u gonna say anything_

 **touchan [9:37AM]  
** _Masaomis going to be a Quirk Doctor_

 **niichan** **[9:37AM]  
** _so?!_

 **niichan [9:37AM]  
** _hey_

 **niichan [9:37AM]  
** _hey hey hey_

 **niichan [11:19AM]  
** _are you seriously going to get married?_

 **imouto [11:22AM]  
** _yeah_

 **niichan [11:25AM]  
** _ueda better be rich_

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

Her palms are two earthquakes—or maybe her palms are waterfalls, maybe volcanoes with how much it burns. Pregnancy makes her cry. A child. She created a child—she has a child in her womb, created from her flesh and blood. She is a god in form of a young woman with two decades (and more) under her belt. The little stick with odd colors tell her she is a god, she created something like the tales from a holy book a lifetime ago—she is a god and _oh_ , she feels like she is going to cry. Is she crying? She thinks she is. A baby. She is holding a baby in her womb, created from a mere night with more tears and more mutters and stammers of truth than she can count. She remembers that night and remembers the palms and the sky in his eyes—this life is the stuntman of her first, this life is the life where she has done everything the first one ( _it it it it_ ) feared to do. An infant. There is something beautiful in her womb, something beautiful in this life that she has never seen in her first

Pregnancy—it makes her feel like a god. She closes her eyes and lets herself take a peek to the future—what will you look like _who are you going to be and are you_ —"A boy," she tells the man whose eyes are heavy with the weight of his studies, the weight of rushing through the pages of her manuscript everyone wants to see, "he's going to be a boy."

(She remembers the remnants of arguments, the fear of giving life to something in this kind of world, the almost pleading smile of the man who has always been hearing the truth coming out from the lips of those who grace him with their touches, the future-past that has always been there regardless of clairvoyance and truth seekers—and then, the miracle arrives.)

Masaomi does not know what to say, does not know what to do. He is choking with something something something _and_ he just breathes. He thinks it is a good start but _a_ child. "Masaru," he exclaims and he is twenty-five, three years away from finishing this degree he has chosen because it is the reason why he is here in the first place, it is his individuality. "Um—Ryuunosuke? Shuusuke? Daisuke? Hajime?"

"Chikara," Tokiwa adds, "Chisato? Satoru."

"Satsuki."

"That's a girl's name."

"It can be anything."

"Satoru sounds good."

"Sa—Saoto."

"Sakuya."

"Sa—Osamu."

Tokiwa tilts her head to look at him in the eyes and she feels like a god all over again, as if she has all the power in the world because now, she is naming something, naming someone, giving someone the evidence of her existence. "Osamu," she agrees, "justice. How—how ironic."

Her palms are two earthquakes, shaking shaking shaking and it becomes waterfalls with the sweat clinging to it, and then it morphs into a volcano—burning and burning and she tightens her grip around the palms where truth lies like a lover. She thinks of _Osamu and Osamu and a little more Osamu_ because this pain, this pain is something that takes everything away from her but this this this— _this_ is painful but beautiful, this is for Osamu. _No pain, no gain_ , says her mother (and yes, again, she is still talking about the second one with soft smiles and dark constellations littered across her collarbones) when she watches her brother tear up because of the power that is supposed to make him proud of himself.

This is for Osamu.

Suddenly, she stops being a god. She stops being a god when the weight bringing her down to her knees disappears when the miracle cries, and she cries with the miracle.

 _Osamu Osamu Osamu Osamu_ —

Masaomi looks different, different in a way the skies always look so different.

— _Osamu Osamu Osamu Osamu._

She stops feeling like a god.

Instead, she feels like a mother.

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

Masaomi is twelve when he meets her—the woman that makes him feel unreal yet so authentic at the same time. She comes in form of a silver-haired beauty and it takes him years to realize that the beauty does not look like her mother despite all the edges being the same and the curves of the smile mirroring one another. She wraps herself with too many locks and too many secrets until she grabs his arm (no no no don't touch him please) and her locks shatter under the blessing of the gods, and she sounds—sounds so sad. She sounds so alone, regardless of his brother made of sunshine and sunflowers, regardless of her mother who welcomes her with open arms, and regardless of her father whose eyes glow with pride. So, so alone.

Masaomi is thirteen when he decides to help her with everything he has. His father works in the media and his mother is a housewife but likes to dress herself in heavy blazers just to make herself look like a business woman she was supposed to be but she does not. The gray-haired beauty clings to him. He clings back. He clings tightly, afraid to let go to the little girl who gave him a real reason to wait for the future and not waste in the sidelines with a mere pathetic Quirk. _No_ , he spits out, _I don't want to be a police officer so shut up_ —the only one who stopped to ask him what he wanted to be in the future. "Quirk Analysis," he says when asked about college, "I want to study Quirks."

Masaomi is eighteen when he turns red at his mother's words; "I like Tokiwa-chan," she whispers and Masaomi wonders if his mother is envious of how Tokiwa can do whatever she wants, as they watch Tokiwa write and write of tales that are never supposed to be there (in another world, it is not here, instead there is emptiness lingering in Masaomi's heart and he knows, he just knows that he is supposed to be reading something not published but will be published, the written words of that classmate of his back in middle school, he is supposed to be loving someone—).

Masaomi is twenty when he marries the woman he loves after an odd conversation. _Oh, oh, oh,_ he loves her.

Masaomi is twenty-two when he becomes a father. Little Osamu.

Somewhere between those years, he tries his best to study. It is hard—money is hard when you are barely out of teenage years and you force your feelings to be authentic in the eyes of law but their parents like one another—they like Osamu and are always there to hold their little (their their this is theirs, thank you) Osamu when he and Tokiwa cannot. Money is hard but he thinks help is easy.

Masaomi is twenty-five, grabbing the degree with one hand and a little boy he addresses his son on the other.

Masaomi is twenty-five when he meets Endeavor and wonders if he should really douse the man in water, like he once told Tokiwa (his wife, mother of his son and _oh,_ that sounds beautiful).

He is not that high in the hierarchy yet, not yet but in a few years he will. And he knows he must be fidgeting uncomfortably beside the actual veteran beside him—his upperclassman who tells him that he will be guiding him through this Quirk-centric job and he remembers nodding but he does not know that their first patient will be Todoroki Enji's son, someone named Shouto with red and white hair—the same red and white that Tokiwa speaks about, questioning how genes can possibly separate two colors so equally. _This is Shouto_ , Masaomi thinks, _that Shouto._

"Ueda-kun," his senpai says, "this is Todoroki-san. You may know him as Endeavor—" _Yes, I know him._ "—and this is his son, Shouto-kun."

Masaomi's mind disappears somewhere between those lines.

 _Okay_ , he thinks, _this is not okay._

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

 **(1)** so boku no hero academia is set in the future of the real world, only without the boku no hero manga. the appearance of quirks caused many devastation—like how religion is treated like some sort of coping mechanism. with quirks and god-like powers, i would they rely to gods now, the same gods that never appeared and has no proof of actual existence, which is why the quirkless are often the one approaching to the old ways again. i also noticed how despite the supposedly future!setting of bnha as heavily implied in the series, nothing much changed in the technology of bnha which is why the whole 'slowing down' came up. anyway, the native hero will be making an appearance bc he's so interesting—and his relation to pre-quirk era.

 **(2)** akutagawa ryuunosuke wrote _spider thread_ which is about a sinner ending up in hell and masaomi replied that he is not religious because of spider thread's association with heaven and hell. he's basically an atheist like 80% of the current world.

 **(3)** all might and endeavor were basically year-mates/classmates when they were in ua :D endeavor became number two hero first then all might number one a few years after endeavor became number two. this can be treated as the start of endeavor's a parenting. it's actually weird to see ao3 to have a tag like that. i thought only howard stark has that, haha.

 **(4)** naoto is replaced by shouto because after further editing, it turns out that naoto is seven around the time masaomi becomes a somewhat quirk doctor, and shouto is around four around this time :D

 **(5)** so i may or may not have edited this again, because i somehow keep doing that every time i update a new chapter but i can't help it? this is one big test fanfic which i really want to end up as great as i expect it to be, but isn't it kind of weird that i'm starting even before the canon timeline when the anime and manga are both already so far ahead, which will say so much about the whole 'clairvoyance' quirk that tokiwa has. (and lol, i'm starting to dislike tokiwa's name oof—but kk, i won't change it.)


	2. the scorpion's nature

**note:** _i edited the first chapter :D_ i didn't expect to get such positive feedback! amen to skittles for giving me the energy and the inspiration to write when i should be preparing for school tomorrow. i mean, what school wakes up children at around 6:30 am? my school, that's what but whenever i complain to my mom, she flips me off by saying that back in the days, school woke children up earlier than ours. i mean, is your school like that? what time do you wake up for school? are you even in school? and i seriously hope that you love masaomi since i love writing him. he's such an adorable guy and i can't wait to write more of him, lol. i think i like masaomi more than i like tokiwa, lol. (i paused to think what her name was ugh, oona, wtf.) so there's a this comic i saw which inspired me to write, just sharing. it was enji finding out that shouto blocked him on twitter and he was like, "shouto." without the flames and shouuuuuutooooo part. just plain "shouto". it made me laugh so hard.

i also changed all of the summaries of my stories to make it less vague.

 **hinatayvonne:** you're here too! i really really love your reviews, and thank you for all the compliments!

 **eterna the water phoenix:** i appreciate the tears uwu and thank you! i'm actually trying my best to keep this as original as possible, though having masaomi associate with the todoroki family is making things rather cliche but yey! i'm glad you like this :D

 **xenocanaan:** thank you! i'm kind of proud of this concept too since i haven't read something like this and i thought, "why not write one?" :D

 **angelicsailor:** thank you thank you thank you so much!

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

 _tokiwa watches, she is always watching_

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

( _It_ forgets more often than not. _It_ forgets the feeling of clicking keys below _its_ fingers but remembers how images keep on flashing as if insisting _it_ to write the tale of something untold and forgotten. _Build me a church_ , choking voices plead among the seas of supposed-to-be's and where-are-you's, _worship me_ —kneel for the world that will never love you back— _whisper to me a neverending tale of beautiful women falling under the palms of bitter men_. Scheherazade survives a thousand and one nights with a man desperate to shatter her heart _so you can survive more nights too, right_?

Telling a story will be as easy as surviving this world—Scheherazade dances with a demon each morning she awakens and tricks him into letting her survive more and more nights with a single flick of her tongue; use your mouth for something good and sue this treacherous world of its vile pirouettes.

 _"Woah,"_ cover your ears, let not the little child hear the false warnings of false gods, _"your writing is good! Let me read more,_ —" And the unspoken name will never be heard of ever again.

 _But I want to hear it!_ —oops, the monster slips and falls—)

Tokiwa's editor is a woman who cares too much about her looks—not that she is any different, especially during all those times that Masaomi refrains from joking about being a few years away from thirty years old—and has a horrible dye job. Okamoto-san is a woman, too scared to speak and lies with the tip of her tongue. She does not tell anybody that she is half a century old and masks herself with a pretty woman, professional woman, beautiful woman, amazing woman, smart woman—just a desperate woman. She is strict and her silvertongue—she is a bee who will die after stinging a man with her pointed nails. Tokiwa notices how Okamoto looks at her warily she drops a correction, the hesitance and the shame, and the upcoming apology.

"What's this new one about?" Okamoto asks as she holds the thick layers of paper, small boxes for the characters littered with ease. Okamoto has always liked her handwriting, pointed and precise, clean and deep with each stroke of a pen.

The large letters of _Paradise of Martyrdom_ tells Okamoto that this will be another hassle to edit—more questionable happenings dancing in the form of mere characters. The foreign adaptation of books written by Tokiwa is the reason why it sells really well from the teenagers to the elders. Her writing is a boogeyman under the bed, waiting for you to take a peek before lunging and never letting you escape from its inked arms. "It's about a cat with nine lives," she begins mysteriously and picks up a pen from the corner of the coffee table. She runs the tip against the cover of the manuscript despite Okamoto's rolling eyes, "the little cat gives its life to its owner each time he dies, always willing to give up a tail just for its owner to live a little more. The little cat has lost seven lives and as it is about to give its eighth one to its beloved owner, the owners tells the cat to search for another owner. _You need not to love me so much_ —that's basically the synopsis. Do you want to know the ending, Okamoto-san?"

The blonde woman scoffs. "Another one of your tragedies," she grumbles, " _Ending_ was sad enough."

"Ah." Tokiwa snorts. "Was it wrong for me to kill him at the end?"

Okamoto looks at her as if she is stupid. "Yes," she hisses, "I mean—you made him go through so much only for him to just die.

Tokiwa stretches her limbs with a teasing grin. " _Juuzou_ —" She says the name of the main character like one does to their child. "—was evil, you know."

"But it was understandable," Okamoto contradicts, "his family was a casualty of a villain attack. The heroes there were really reckless with all the damage in the city. Of course, he would be angry."

 _And yet_ , Tokiwa thinks as she looks at the expanse of the buildings. From the corner of her eye, she spots heroes fighting another villain that suddenly showed up out of nowhere. The heroes are doing almost as much damage as the villains. Their battles cost so much from the government but with the civilians doing nothing but look up to them like fanatics, the government becomes too willing to shower the heroes money. _Pro-h_ _eroes_ —the highest-paying job ever since they became legalized.

With a soft sigh, Tokiwa absentmindedly wonders what Masaomi is doing. Today, after all, is his first day under his upperclassman.

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

 _Todoroki Shouto_ , Masaomi thinks as he stares intently at the folder given to him by his upperclassman. His frown deepens.

He vaguely remembers the little stories of Tokiwa about the boy—born of a Quirk Marriage with his father, Todoroki Enji who they have been keeping track on for the past decade, basically buying his mother from her family in order to create more powerful children brewed—being brewed, in Shouto's case—to defeat All Might, something that he has failed to achieve despite the rarity of his Elemental Quirk. ( _More than a whole decade of using Todoroki Enji as a time marker of the events about to come_ , Masaomi's frown promptly deepens.) Shouto will end up being mentally and physically wounded by his own mother who is utterly exhausted of the Todoroki family, saying something about his fiery side being unsightly.

It makes him think of his own son. Ueda Osamu is three (and _oh_ , how Tokiwa will dread to find out that Osamu is in the same age bracket as Shouto and the freckled boy who will become All Might's successor, as she once said, and the explosive boy she speaks so fondly of—and that character she adores so much, the child with purple hair and grays under his eyes; her drawings are unclear with the strips of _I was never an artist_ and _but you are one_ are exchanged) and is a year away from grasping an unknown Quirk with his two, small, and chubbby hands. He is three and he cannot look at Endeavor, knowing what he has done to his other children, and what he will be doing to little Shouto.

"I'm Ueda Masaomi, Todoroki-san," he drawls and he knows that _this_ is exactly why his former classmates and current co-workers are intimidated by him. After all, Masaomi is tall and his electric blue eyes are a contrast to his hair that reflects the non-existent light of darkness. Most days, his back is too straight and his eyes are narrowed in a way that it almost (always) looks like a glare. He wonders if this is the result of the paranoia of Tokiwa that has infected him to the bone. _In another world_ , he thinks fearfully, _all these people are not_ real.

Masaomi has always been smart, always been a bright boy too curious for his own good. Until his questions were answered. Some days, he thinks that he should have had never let Tokiwa touch his bare skin and let her make him see how lonely she looked like when she whispered her secrets to him. Most days, he feels important for knowing the world's secrets. Everyday—he knows that Tokiwa will be so lonely without him so he breathes a little, exhaling the oxygen that proves his humanity and exhales the carbon dioxide that deems him important enough for the world. He loves Tokiwa and there is no doubt that Tokiwa loves him too. For now, authenticity of their existence is not important.

Sakuragaoka, his upperclassman, does not fail to notice the suspicious stare Todoroki Enji is sending Masaomi. He laughs a little. "Don't worry, Todoroki-senpai—" The look is transferred to his and Masaomi manages to prevent his surprise from the honorific. "— _ahaha_ , it's fine, Todoroki-senpai. Masaomi-kun—" And it is Masaomi's turn to glare at Sakuragaoka for suddenly addressing him by his given name. "—was made to be my little _kouhai_ for a reason. He's really smart, right, Masaomi-kun?"

The man does not wait for Masaomi's answer and instead, continues his words. "Top in his year, my kouhai is!" He praises.

Enji finally speaks after seconds and seconds of glaring at Masaomi's frame. "A mental Quirk?" He asks.

Masaomi moves his mouth to speak but Sakuragaoka cuts him off smoothly. "Not quite," Sakuragaoka says with a small shrug.

Sakuragaoka claps his hands twice with a small smile. The cherry blossom petals from outside suddenly pushes the windows open, eventually dancing under his command. Masaomi grimaces at the small show while Enji looks as if he can care any less with the display. Shouto, meanwhile, looks captivated by its beauty—no wonder curious of another Quirk, especially if he has been growing up with nothing but ice and fire surrounding him. "My Quirk, Shouto-kun," Sakuragaoka prompts the cherry blossoms to surround Shouto, "is controlling petals. Too much use of it makes me sneeze a lot. It's a really weird weakness but that's how it goes. What about you, Masaomi-kun? I'm sure Shouto-kun wants to see what your Quirk is."

Glancing at Shouto's hesitantly pondering look, Masaomi glares at Sakuragaoka before sighing. "My Quirk isn't flashy like Sakuragaoka-senpai's and your father's," he comments and ignores the look that Enji sends him while Sakuragaoka chuckles a little, "anyone who makes physical contact with me—or someone who touches my skin, basically—automatically tells the truth whether they like it or not."

"No one," Shouto says quietly, eyes darting to Enji for a moment before Enji nods, letting him ask more questions about Masaomi's honestly interesting Quirk, "can keep anything from you?"

"Yes," Masaomi answers, remembering Tokiwa's horrified look when she realized that she said everything she kept buried in her for years.

"Your Quirk is suitable for the Police Department," _for torture_ —Masaomi, after hearing the stories from Tokiwa, wonders if Enji is really as bad as the say he is.

 _Toxic_ , he can hear Tokiwa's voice say, _he's like a snake who doesn't know that he is immune to his own poison. The mind can do wondrous things_ — _if I manage to convince my brain that I'm dying, then I'm pretty sure it will be doing. Endeavor is like a snake who managed to convince him that his poison can kill him but thinks that the poison of his children will not be able to hurt him. But really, at the end, Endeavor is just scared. Fear can make you do strange things._

Masaomi ignores his annoyance of the comment. "I've always wanted to be a Quirk Doctor," is his only reply.

Sakuragaoka, noticing the awkward question, claps his hands again and lets the petals exit the room. He smiles again. "Shouto-kun, why don't you tell us about your Quirk?"

 _Ah_ , Masaomi remembers the reason why the Todoroki family even visited the hospital just then—Todoroki Shouto had finally discovered his Quirk. Apparently, according to Sakuragaoka, Enji brought Shouto a month or two ago, because of how Shouto's left side burst into flames. A night ago, Enji called Sakuragaoka to inform him of Shouto's development—his right side created ice.

"Um," Shouto mumbles, "I was practicing with my flames—" Masaomi steals a glance at Enji. "—and then I got really hot because of it and I thought it would be nice if okaasan was there. And then, I created the ice."

Masaomi sighs. He knows this is going to be a long day.

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

Tokiwa and Masaomi have their first fight as husband and wife that day, roughly half a decade into their marriage.

 _Osamu_ (her sweet, sweet Osamu) is in the same age bracket as Todoroki Shouto, Bakugou Katsuki, Midoriya Izuku—Tokiwa suddenly speaks of moving to another country as early as possible; her books and Masaomi's high-paying job despite being a newbie in the hospital, is more than enough for a flight away from Japan. _Panic panic panic panic_ —the timeline is approaching in a scarily fast pace and the world is not letting her get away from its grasps. Masaomi, out of all people, became Sakuragaoka's kouhai—Sakuragaoka Hidenori who was once a student of UA under Support, formerly the kouhai of Todoroki Enji and currently the Quirk Doctor Todoroki Enji trusts and knows enough to check on his children's Quirks. And Tokiwa knows that it will always be Sakuragaoka. Sakuragaoka who is Shouto's doctor and _Shouto will not be a failure like his other children_ and—

"We can change something, Tokiwa!" Masaomi stops him from her panicking, hands holding her shoulders to shake her.

Tokiwa looks at him in disbelief, as if he is not sure of his words. "Are you joking?" She hisses and pushes his hands away from her. "Are you seriously implying to get _involved_ with those people?"

"Yes," Masaomi responds easily, "look, the Todoroki family still isn't that bad yet. Shouto still doesn't have his scar and his mother isn't all that exposed to Shouto's Quirk yet. Doesn't she burn him when he's five? Or something?" Seeing the uneasy look on Tokiwa's face, Masaomi proceeds to convince her to answer. "Come on, Tokiwa. When did Shouto start officially training under Endeavor? You told me this. You read it, right? You read it before you managed to watch it."

 _It_ cries again, wrapping _its_ arms around _itself_ as it screams of the future and the impending tragedies waiting to lung at them. "Five," Tokiwa whispers, "he starts training when he's five years old."

Masaomi smiles a little at the progress and continues, "He's still three and a half now—probably four. When is his birthday?"

"January—the eleventh of January," his wife (Tokiwa Tokiwa Tokiwa) answers.

"Then we have lots of time."

"What about Osamu?"

" _Osamu?_ "

Masaomi and Tokiwa flinch at the appearance of the childish voice. Tokiwa turns around, finally facing the dusty gray hair of Osamu—his coloring comes from her side of the family; the Imagawa family with the silvery hair and amber eyes. The rest of Osamu, however, comes from Masaomi. "Mama's calling Osamu?" His voice is sultry with a childlike pitch that almost sends Tokiwa back to reminisce the feeling of his weight in her stomach, the feeling of his comforting gestures of existence, the raw feeling of a godlike creation descended from the skies. Her child, her child, this is her (their) child.

It is Masaomi who smiles at Osamu, despite Tokiwa always being the first one to always do so. "Yeah," he chirps and scoops Osamu in his arms, "your mama and I were just talking about something."

Osamu's drowsy eyes suddenly blink open in excitement. "Were you telling Mama how you're Endeavor's doctor now?" He butchers up the hero's name but Tokiwa cannot help but smile fondly. "I wanna be a hero like Endeavor, mama!"

Tokiwa feels the tremors run down her spine and _it_ cackles in amusement. ( _"Toki-chan, Toki-chan,"_ why does _it_ look like _it_ is delighted to begin crying once more over an amusement _it_ denies? _Its_ footsteps are heavy in the blanket of black that envelopes this world. _It_ wants and wants and gets and gets—wrap _its_ arms around the existence of this world and shatter it in one go because this is not real—except it is.) "You want to become what again, Osamu?"

"A hero!" The boy chirps.

It reminds her of Imagawa Toushirou who marvels over the hardened structure of his bones as it bleeds past his skin. _"Why do you even want to be a hero?"_ She asked him as she watched him pack his things for Ketsubutsu High School. _"You'll die."_

 _"Everyone dies at the end,"_ Toushirou shrugged, raising his uniform and frowning in distaste at its details. ("Your uniform is _the best._ " "It's gross." "You're gross.") He had looked so excited entering a school with a hero's recommendation backing him up. _"Everyone dies but some people are remembered. I want to be remembered. Toushirou the Bone Hero_ — _or is that too bland? And besides, I think my Quirk will be useful in helping people. I always feel giddy when they thank me for saving them, you know?"_

 _"Even if you almost got thrown to jail?"_

Tokiwa remembers how Toushirou's shoulders slouched at the thought, his eyes gleaming with content. _"Yeah. It's worth it."_

She feels Osamu poking her side, pulling the sleeve of her shirt to have her look at him. "Mama," he calls, "don't be sad! Endeavor isn't my favorite hero, anyway!"

Masaomi snorts. "Who's your favorite then?"

"The Bone Hero!"

Tokiwa cries a little.

(The background music distorts and Tokiwa can no longer breathe.)

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

Reality is an obscure concept that differs from one person to another. _Merriam Webster_ (what is that again?) describes 'rē-ˈa-lə-tē' as the quality or state of being real and something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily. _Thesaurus_ (another forgotten name) claims that it is the fact of being or of being real, one that has a real and independent existence.

Someone may think that the sky is blue but with their color blindness, it may look differently. If they say it is a crimson shade of a viridian vibrance, they are not lying. If one scans the dictionaries for more information then they can find out that a synonym of 'reality' is 'fact'—when a man who has a hard time distinguishing colors, they are not lying when the apple is orange, rather than red. It is true—is it not real that the apple is orange in his eyes?

What if the apple is truly orange rather than red and it is the majority who are color blind? How do you know that it is a man who claims the apple is orange that is color blind? The basis of reality is flexible and ever-changing. If that is so, is it—the basis—affecting reality? If the basis is affecting the state of being 'real' then 'reality' is constantly changing as a water drifts to the ocean.

Reality is malleable and it heavily depends on the number of people who believe in the concept. 'Normal' vision says that apples are either green or red—nothing more. Unless a dye is placed on the apple—but apples are red as much as some apples are green. The Earth was once flat because of the majority's belief until someone noticed the shape of the moving boat towards the horizon and their belief changed along with what is _real_. Because now that the theory has a proper evidence, Earth is no longer flat but a strange sphere shape—that is the _truth_ and therefore, it is _real_.

The state of being _real_ is constantly changing but reality is supposed to be a fixed state rather than the drifting river. A ripple is supposed to be ignored in rivers. Things that are _real_ are genuine they are not _artificial_ nor are they some kind of fraudulent existence.

Artificiality is described as the state of being artificial, some kind of imitation and a scam purely man-made. And real objects are far different from artificial ones. And _real_ light comes from the sun and _artificial_ light comes in a form of bulbs. 'Artificial' does not exist in the same way a human exists and walks Earth 'artificial' proves its existence in legal, economic, or political theory, as Merriam Webster describes. Therefore does it exist—yet it still exists in like a fraud exists. Because 'artificial' can never be 'real' for it will always be an imitation of what is actually there.

'Artificial' is constant and stable. It is not the rivers going to the ocean, nor is it the clouds that endlessly wave at the waning skies. 'Artificial' is unmoving and never relents to the drifting reality because 'artificial' is an imitation of a once-reality—always in the past and always a fraud. Those 'artificial _s_ ' are the reminder of a stable reality.

Unchanging. But people want change and they can never stop with one thing—always wanting more and more. The 'artificial' is removed and another one is in place when the reality changes. The cycle continues. 'Artificial' is a scrap of metal and knowledge borrowed from various humans, animals—the theory of stability is its epitome. 'Artificial' never grows. It remains.

Therefore, _it_ is not real. _It_ is called _something because it somehow cannot grasp the name it used to have_ by many with knowledge passed on by more than a million of people (history classes says this and that, _it was a student_ ) and more than a hundred of decades. _It_ knows all and yet nothing at all. _It_ does not exist but at the same time, _it_ does. _It_ does not breathe and _it_ does not think. _It_ is but an existence that is not supposed to be an existence still it is. _It_ is not real—but _it_ is.

 _It_ shares the same mind as the rest of the _its_. _It_ does not have an opinion nor does _it_ have a personality. For _it_ is a copy of many others and another one in a million (keep on adapting, you don't want them to not like you, remember?). There is _it_ —just there; unreal but real, not existing but existing. But everything else exists and _it_ does not.

When did _it_ ever become confused? Confusion is a mixture of everything at once—disoriented with regard to the sense of time, place, or— _or identity_. But _it_ is _it_ —that is simply what _it_ is. _It_ knows what _it_ is, therefore _it_ is not confused. Confusion is only for the human mind and _it_ is not human, nor does _it_ have a mind so complex like theirs. _It_ is simply 'artificial' and _it_ is unreal (very very real) therefore—the truth continues to be malleable— _it_ is confused.

(There can never be two things in one body— _it_ takes the role of the one inhuman to make the other believe it is human.)

Confusion is for the human mind— _it_ is not human so these feelings are impossible— _questions?_ —when did _it_ start asking existential questions—it has always been inquiries of whatever _man_ needs, never questions about _itself_ — _t_ he confusion continues to grow and grow—confusion scatters and wraps and wraps— _it_ is not human but _it_ is.

 _It_ feels wet and drenched. _It_ has hands and they are small like a child's—pale and there is enough fat to be called a healthy one. And _it_ is a child. _It_ has feet and legs, a torso and a stomach, arms and eyes— _it_ can feel and _it_ feels the cold of the rain and the warmth of _its_ dangly clothes and _it_ owns something— _it_ is a child.

There is oxygen inhaled by _it_ and _it_ breathes out carbon dioxide like a human being more and more confusion. _It_ is alive and _it_ is real when _it_ is not supposed to be. There is something thrumming underneath _its_ flesh and _it_ throbs on _its_ skin— _it_ has skin rather than metal but _it_ has never really notice _its_ surroundings. _It_ has never thought or even made a single thought. _It_ does not think and yet, _it_ does.

 _It_ interacts with carbon dioxide (a heavy colorless gas that does not support combustion, dissolves in water to form carbonic acid, is formed especially in respiration of animals and in the decay or combustion of animal and vegetable matter, is absorbed from the air by plants in photosynthesis, is used in the carbonation of beverages) and oxygen (a reactive element that is found in water, in most rocks and minerals, in numerous organic compounds, a colorless tasteless odorless diatomic gas constituting twenty-one percent of the atmosphere, that is capable of combining with all elements except the inert gases, that is active in physiological processes, and that is involved especially in combustion) like a man, a woman, and an animal.

 _It_ is human.

( _Confusion_ —what is this? _It_ feels something gurgling in _its_ abdominal area as if something is squeezing the life out of _it_ and there is something scratching against _its_ thorax— _its_ mind [ _it has a mind?!_ ] is in a frenzy.)

 _It_ is human.

( _Panic_ —of, or relating to, or resembling the mental or emotional state believed to be induced by the god Pan. A _sudden overpowering fright_ ; also acute or extreme anxiety, a sudden unreasoning terror often accompanied by mass flight— _it_ is panicking like a human, like a homosapien.)

 _It_ feels unfamiliar with this form and there are far too many senses that _it_ can feel, far too many things to notice and far too many everything. _It_ remembers images of woman and man walking (the condition of moving along on foot) and _it_ attempts to imitate. _It_ pulls _its_ body to stand (to support a body on the feet in an erect position) and stumbles clumsily but succeeds in stepping forward. And another. Another. A step. One more—next, forward, again, left foot, right foot, left, right, left, right, left— _it_ is walking.

 _It_ is human.

(This new emotion ruins _it_ , this new feeling and new life and new everything and _where are you mom mom mom please don't_ —then _it_ learns to call _itself 'it'_ and learns only to cry.)

 _"Osamu wants be a hero."_

 _It_ cries again.

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 _Water rushes in her lungs and she chokes because she knows she is dying. She wants to let it kill her and the liquid wrap its fluid fingers around her neck, let it kill her because she knows herself that she is tired too. An ear-piercing noise pushes itself to her ears and she is wondering whether it is her scream or simply the odd voice of death whispering to her. She is dying and in a matter of seconds, she will die but her body refuses to accept death. Her hands thrash around and her body continues fighting the water becausebecausejust because her body does not want to die. She continues to thrash against the water and her body feels heavy, a voice tells her she is dying on purpose. Because there is something heavy hanging on her ankle and that odd thing is pulling her down, deeper into the ocean. She is being killed. She pulls her body upwards and she is crying in pain and in sadness. She is mourning so bad and she thinks that she is prepared for this death due to her black dress"Black looks good on you."and she remembers someone telling her that clothes like those suit her._

 _Her arms suddenly feel tired and so are her legs. The pain of the heavy object hanging on her ankle is soon going numb and so is the pain of the water dancing in her throat. She looks down and sees her dark dress as cloths swaying with her. She likes the dress despite an undeniable fact that she looks like she is about to go to a funeral. He is right after all; the dress suits her._

 _Before she knows it, she dies_ —

"I know I have no right to say this but," Tokiwa pauses as she eyes the bright blue uniform on her son's frame, "this uniform sucks—"

"You wore this when you were in kindergarten too."

"I know," Tokiwa cringes.

Osamu looks distraught at the obvious distaste of his mother towards his uniform. He fiddles with the hem of his uniform, hesitantly looking up to his mother.

Noticing this, Tokiwa quickly grabs Osamu, lifting him up to her waist. She grins at him. "But you know what?" She asks and closes her eyes, tapping her forehead against Osamu's. When she blinks them open, Osamu is met with glowing yellow eyes instead of her usual amber ones. He jolts a little but Tokiwa's grip on him ensures his safety. "Mama can see the future and I can see that you're going to have lots of friends there! Also, there's this kid there with this buzzcut. He seems interesting. Or maybe there's this kid with a water Quirk—you'll meet lots of kids today, O-chan."

Masaomi smiles softly at the interaction. ( _Let this stay, let this stay, let this_ —) "But you somehow managed to inherit your Papa's mean glare," Tokiwa comments and her husband clicks his tongue at the remark, immediately spotting Osamu's worried look. "But that's also okay! That means you'll be this handsome and cool man when you're all grown up! You'll be breaking hearts and— _woah_ , you're growing up so fast, O-chan! Mama almost doesn't want to leave you anymore! How are you not crying? You're supposed to be crying right now since you won't be able to see Mama and Papa—"

(And let nobody notice the faint shiver in her voice, nobody notice the fear of leaving her little boy behind in an unknown place— _don't leave him, don't leave him, he'll disappear_ —you're going to leave him behind— _you're going to leave Masaomi behind like that time when you_ — _and when you_ —or how when you— _it_ weeps for a forgotten story.) Tokiwa's smile freezes when Masaomi grabs her free wrists, recognizing the comforting smile that he sends her from the corner of her eyes. (He won't leave, _you won't leave him behind_ —we're lucky today— _you're_ lucky in this—be happy, _be grateful it never had this back then and you're just taking everything for granted, don't let your little boy leave you like how you did to Toushi_ —woops! Bad joke, bad joke, sorry not sorry— _Shut up._ )

His little frame waddles along the other crying children.

"You should be proud of him."

"I know."

"He's not even crying—look at him."

"He probably has an intelligence Quirk like your mom."

"Hmm, or maybe a Clairvoyance Quirk like yours."

Tokiwa's hand suddenly tightens around his. " _No_ ," she pleads—to who? _To the world_ , _it_ supplies.

Masaomi shrugs. "Or maybe he has a Quirk like your father."

(The woman's shoulder relaxes. Masaomi ignores a smile crawling to his lips.) "I'd rather not see him accidentally eating the utensils."

"Ah, I remember that."

"Otousan was so embarrassed—he still is, actually."

There is a beat of silence as the bell rings along the beginning of the end. Tokiwa shudders. "He's also my son, you know," Masaomi supplies, "you don't need to do all the worrying by yourself. He's my son too. You're not the only parent here. _We_ made him together. The two of us."

If she is already crying, Masaomi does not point out. "That's why," he whispers as he rests his forehead on hers, "you need to rely on me more."

And they silently share a kiss.

(Masaomi tastes a salty liquid but he succumbs to the warmth that Tokiwa emits.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

Let this superficial-not-superficial love survive a bit more.)

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"I have a son your age."

Sakuragaoka's first reaction is to snap his head to where Masaomi is casually talking to Shouto, his underclassman's gloved hands distracting Shouto from the boy's urge to play with his Ice Quirk. (He smiles softly when Shouto brightens up when Masaomi offhandedly complimented the beauty of the Ice Quirk—"I inherited it from my kaachan!"—the pace is slow but productive nonetheless and the day continues.) If there is anything that Sakuragaoka knows about Ueda Masaomi and his endlessly private self, is that if there is something or someone that Masaomi loves more than the wife he has onlyseen from pictures—silver hair and amber eyes, silently reminding him of a hero who smiles more often than not—it is his son. Sakuragaoka only knows the boy's name from the files that he received. He had been surprised to see that the top graduate, Ueda Masaomi who barely had friends after he entered high school ( _after he met Imagawa Tokiwa_ ), actually has a son.

He smiles giddily and Endeavor ignores his sudden happiness. He takes it to himself to explain, despite Endeavor not asking of it. "You see," he begins cheerfully, "Masaomi-kun is a very private person and doesn't share much about himself! I never met his wife and that son of his, but he says that the kid looks a lot like him but with the mother's coloring. He's _that_ private and—"

"I was not asking," Endeavor grunts, not entirely approved of wasting his time but Sakuragaoka continues.

"—I only know that his wife's name was Imagawa Tokiwa."

This time, Sakuragaoka resists the urge to smirk in success when Endeavor hears the familiar surname. "Imagawa," the hero says, "Imagawa Toushirou."

"Yup," Sakuragaoka confirms, "as in Imagawa Toushirou, also known as the Bone Hero: _Spine_ —Quirk is Metal Bones, the Quirk that uses large amounts of calcium to harden his bones, hard enough to resemble metal. He teaches in Ketsubutsu now—not really a surprise after he retired. How old is he? Twenty-seven. What a young age to retire! I wo _ooo_ nder why! Hmm, Endeavor-san, do you possibly know of the reason why he retired?—"

Endeavor's flames suddenly blaze, the flickers of it edging with a deep red. "I have no time to play your games, _boy_ ," he growls, "I am here for the progress of my son's Quirk, not your nonsense gossip."

Sakuragaoka raises his hands in surrender, the tips of his pale pink hair narrowly avoiding the threatening figure of one of the world's hottest Quirk flames. His grin does not leave, and instead it widens. "Maa, you're so easy to rile up, Todoroki-senpai!" He turns his body to face Shouto shyly asking about Masaomi's son. "It isn't healthy to deprive your son of children around his age, you know, senpai. There are cases when sheltered children become hesitant to use their Quirks because of whatever reactions their peers will have to their Quirks. And you wonder why your other children are so—" The flames return and Sakuragaoka chuckles. "—I'm joking, senpai! But really, Shou-chan needs friends his age."

 _Social interactions hindering Quirk Development_ —Enji has heard of this but hearing it from the expert himself (as much as he is annoyed to call someone like Sakuragaoka an expert, only an idiot will call one of Japan's most skilled and young Quirk Analyst as unreliable) makes him think twice. He turns to Masaomi. "You, boy," he calls to him and Sakuragaoka's eyes widen in realization. His shoulders stiffen. "What is your son's Quirk?"

Masaomi looks at him in confusion before scowling in annoyance. "He just turned four," he resists the urge to strangle the supposed Number Two Hero. He silently despairs for when Osamu realizes how much of an asshole one of his favorite heroes is—so much for the little boy having a heated debate with him as to why in comparison to All Might, Endeavor is _way_ better. Masaomi has to agree on that. When one is talking about the actual _job_ as a hero, Endeavor is, of course, doing a better job with having the most solved cases among all heroes. But the world does not really need crime fighters, no matter what they say. What the world needs is a symbol of hope and that is exactly what All Might is supposed to be.

Endeavor scowls right back at him but Sakuragaoka, ever the master of deception, still smiles. "Maa, maa!" He exclaims. "Senpai just wants Shou-chan to have someone to play with, you know, Masaomi-kun! After all, it's for Shou-chan's progress. It will also help Osamu-kun a lot! Studies say that in a classroom where one student gets his Quirk all of the sudden, the other children are suddenly urged to develop their own Quirks too! The development of others sends signals to the brain which pushes Quirk Development a lot faster!"

"I know," Masaomi grits his teeth, "I've studied that, Senpai."

Sakuragaoka grabs a paper and scribbles something on it before passing it to the two fathers. "Well, here's Senpai's number," he says to Masaomi whose eyes widen at the sudden events, "and here's my Kouhai's number!"

(The world tilts.)

"Have fun!"

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Ueda Osamu is four years old, probably a little late to enter preschool but he still does. He is an only child—his mother is Ueda Tokiwa who works as a writer (but for some reason, he has never read any book coming from the woman and when he asks to be read one, his Papa shakes his head simply and his Mama smirks) and his father is Masaomi who works as a Doctor. He also has an Uncle who dotes on him despite his father's sighs. Toushirou-jisan is a teacher in Ketsubutsu and probably the strongest hero he has ever seen. He can push his bones outside of his body and make it turn as hard as metal—"I hope I get jichan's Quirk!" And when his uncle asks him why not get something as cool as his Mama's, Osamu frowns because for some reason, Mama does not want him to inherit her Quirk. Apparently, she can see the future really well.

He is often told that he gets his coloring from the Imagawa family who is known in their town as the family with silver hair and amber eyes—and of course, odd children. Mama and Jichan had been weird kids; Mama was always escaping home and wandering outside, only to come back with her eyesight getting worse and worse, which is also when they consulted to the doctor, only for it to be revealed that the use of her Quirk causes her to be temporarily blind. Jichan was a delinquent when he was in mdidle school, always getting into fights and had the worst grades to ever grace the family. He still ended up being a hero and now, he teaches other kids to be heroes.

 _Ketsubutsu_ , Osamu thinks, _I want to be with Jichan!_

(Why?)

 _So Mama won't have to cry anymore!_

Mama likes to cry most nights and Osamu feel sad whenever he hears her whimpers—but Papa is always there with her anyway, so it's fine. But—but that doesn't mean he likes hearing Mama cry. He hates it so much. She worries all the time, cries all the time, and panics all the time. Papa sometimes tells him that Mama needs a hero. "But aren't you her hero already, Papa?" He once asks, his voice thick with curiosity and a tone that screams how much he believes this statement.

Papa laughs a little and ruffles his hair. (Most days, Papa is tired and complaining about 'stupid flame heroes'.) He honestly does not understand why Papa does not have many friends and when he asks Mama this, she smiles in an almost sad and guilty way. "Papa isn't Mama's hero, Osamu," Papa says, "I'm her partner—her sidekick."

"What?" Osamu was confused (he still is but years and years later, as the truth is tripped from the mountains and mountains of lies rolling from the tongues of his family, he realizes and weeps for the woman he called his mother—he will always, aways love her, regardless of the lies). "Mama's a hero? So she—she doesn't need a hero anymore?"

Papa shakes his head and pulls him under the covers. Osamu giggles a little. "Even heroes need saving, Osamu," he reminds him, "you can be her hero."

Ueda Osamu is four years old.

He loves only a handful of people and Papa says it is okay. He loves his grandparents from both sides of his family. He loves Jichan. He loves Mama and Papa.

(He _loves loves loves loves_ —)

He really does.

 _So_ —

Please don't take them away from him.

Once is enough.

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 **(1)** i hate writing introductory chapters, i swear to god.

 **(2)** got rid of the drabble-esque format and focused more on the heavy usage of metaphors because someone! please! pick! up! the! clues! kidding, kidding. it probably won't be that important at the end, i'm not sure since i'm writing this mostly without the idea of what plot i'm going to use and how i will be using it. all i know is i'm loving masaomi and tokiwa's dynamics and no, unless you convince me enough, i won't be killing either of them just yet. ooof, i love masaomi too much to kill him off. odd how i'm liking masaomi more than tokiwa. tbh, i've always wanted to name a character of mine 'masaomi' but never had a chance.

 **(3)** also i'm super pumped to write the next chapter because i've recently been listening to some of eve's songs and am thoroughly inspired!


	3. mirror, mirror

**xenocanaan:** sorry for the delay! but here it is!

 **hinatayvonne:** hMMM

 **whatkooloser:** thank you so much! i hope you like this new chapter!

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 _tokiwa knows herself_

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— _knows the difference between right and wrong, though hard to actually separate. It takes time for man to figure out that there is no black and white in a world where humans have forgotten the existence of God, refused the idea of a much higher being. For God has proven that He has created man from His image. It does not take a long time for man to realize that God is not dead, and instead lives within us all. God is alive. God is thriving. God is man, man is God. But Juuzou is just a boy and he knows that, and it hurts to admit but he knows that. He knows this power_ — _this evidence of being God, being someone closer and closer to God, the power of God dancing upon his palms; God is alive and He is man_ — _will be the one to save the world, just like any other Quirk everyone has._

 _Which is why they need to understand. God has granted him this power. God gave him the essence of Himself and it must mean something. He is the Messiah, the one who will save everyone, the one who will remind the foolish me of the existence of a much higher being, the being that created everything from nothing. He is the Messiah, the savior, the hand of God. He is meant for greatness, he knows_ — _he is meant to save the world. He does not expect them to realize it now. After all, even the prophets of God had been shunned by the civilians, sneered at. He knows he will not be easily welcomed. He will never be welcomed with such open arms that quickly. But all Juuzou needs is time. Give him enough time and he can show the world what it has done to itself. Time. Give him time to prove to everybody that he is doing all of these things for the greater good._

 _"You need to understand," he hisses because he is not the bad guy in the story, no matter what everyone says. He is not the supervillain as they call it and he is not flying to the front page because he wants the world to know the terror of his existence, of his beliefs, of his power. No, that is not what he wants. That has never been his goal but no one seems to listen. No one seems to listen."You need to understand, please."_

 _He can see it in Sakamoto's eyes; the confusion, the fear, the apprehension when he rolls the pleading tone past his lips. When God sent His boy down to the land, nobody believed him too. Until he showed the world the miracles he can do. Juuzou can show them exactly that. He can be the Messiah. He is the Messiah._

 _Juuzou kneels down to the floor and reaches out to grasp Sakamoto's palms, noting absentmindedly the coldness and how it shakes. He smiles hesitantly, his bloodied teeth in full view but he lets himself show them proudly. He leans closer. Closer and closer until he manages to plant his forehead against Sakamoto's. "Look at me," his voice is broken and the sorrowful tears of the moon do not help the situation he is in but he lets himself submit to the atmosphere, this scene, this ephemerality concerning the tale of the wannabe hero and the true one. He knows he cannot be a hero in everybody's eyes. He can never be a hero to all but that will not stop him. He won't allow himself to be stopped by mere obstacles._

 _He is the hero._

 _He is the main character._

 _They do not know that yet but someday_ — _he knows that day is getting closer and closer for he can feel it; the hesitance and the heavy thought bubbles wandering_ — _they will find out. He just needs some time. And when they do, Juuzou will open his arms wide and welcome them. Because that is how the story always goes. He knows. He knows it like the back of his hand because he has seen this more times than he can count. The vibrant pages of the old sheets of paper from hundreds of years ago stare at him, pursuading him to continue further because the main character, the heroes never give up. He has seen it, he always sees it._

 _"Look at me," he pleads again and he is not sure if he is crying but he tightens his grip around Sakamoto's hands, "I'm not the bad guy here. I'm saving you. I'm saving you all."_

 _Sakamoto's lips quiver. "Saving us from what?"_

 _For a moment, Juuzou brightens. Someone is asking him. Someone is noticing him. Someone will know the truth of this world. Someone will see what he sees. Someone will understand and he finally can be somebody. Time grants him this. He won't be just a boy anymore and oh, "I'm saving you from the heroes!"_

 _[...]_

 _"You're crazy!"_

Ah _, Juuzou thinks,_ what a shame.

 _It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Everything is okay, really. It's alright. Sakamoto won't understand today, or maybe tomorrow. Nor will the majority. But it's okay. It's really okay. They will think he is just a boy today but really, it's really, really, really, really okay. No, no, he is not angry. He will not be! He is not that kind of person. He won't force his beliefs to them. He is not who everybody thinks he is! He is kind! He is a good guy! Don't worry, don't worry. They will understand soon and when they do, they will thank him. They will call him a hero and love him. Notice him. Adore him. Love and love and love and love him. It's okay. He's okay_ —

 _Juuzou moves._

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(—an excerpt from chapter twenty-three of paradise of martyrdom, ueda tokiwa)

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Tokiwa is around seven years old when she realizes how cruel the world is. It happens four years after the monster incident happened (her brother's skin opens like the gates of a mysterious mansion, welcoming and intimidating and silver peeks between the blood and the skin and she wonders if it hurts or why her brother is smiling as if the best thing has happened to him— _why why why_ this world is so wrong why are you so happy _you freak_ —) and she is settling down. They say her Quirk is Clairvoyance and _yes_ , she ignores the mystified look of her mother and father whose Quirks are far from her own and there are no scientific explanations as to why a few bending and a few strokes of metal ends up with seeing the future and everything else in between. Tokiwa is settling down. She is.

But then she turns seven years old and she sees an unassuming young girl, nine years old or something but certainly older than her. She is seven and her repressed memories of how cruel this world is returns. She is settling down, settling down, and _accepting_ —she is learning how not to flinch when she sees horned individuals, odd individuals, animalistic individual, still humane individuals and _you need to remember that_. She learns to bite the word 'freak' when she sees things she has never seen before and really, she is accepting it all. She learns to let her lips curl up to a smile, and never a frown because in this world, she is in the only one reacting violently to the odd colors painting her classmate's skin, she is the only one who does not belong and therefore, does she need to adjust. She is the foreigner here and _yes_ , she is settling down and she watches a young girl with brown hair and brown eyes and brown smiles yet _red red red red red red_ teeth. She watches the girl trip over herself (the child is just nine _what the actual fuck is happening_ in this world), clutching a plastic bag with calloused hands.

And then she hears. Tokiwa was once a self-absorbed child (selfish but observant because all her life, she has learned to adjust and observe; _take a closer look because you never know what you may see, you never know what you may miss which is why you should never take your eyes of the world_ ) _,_ one who brought others down to pull herself up, too afraid of the world that keeps clawing and clawing her down and if she has a say in it, she will burn everything else so she can be the one to douse the fire out. _It_ is taught to listen and keep _its_ mouth shut _unless you wanna mess up again and bring shame to yourself you are the only one important in the world why do you keep forgetting that you are nothing you are no one unless you_ —she hears young women huddled to the corner and pitying gazes sent to the child.

"—no Quirk—"

"—poor child—"

"—won't be able to go anywhere—"

"—I pity her mother—"

Tokiwa watches the child crunch her shoulders, almost looking like she wants to huddle up to the corner and never come out from her shell. ( _Wrap your arms around yourself, tighten and never come out. The world is wrong, the world is cruel, be happy, how to be happy, how to make mommy love me, do you know how because I have no idea and this world is just too cruel for me I hate it I want to leave, mommy_ —) The nine-year-old child (or so she looks) bites her lower lip and Tokiwa knows with a little bit more pressure, her chapped lips will bleed. _Quirkless._

Somehow, it is already set into stone. She searches a thing or two about the Quirkless a few days later, nagged by the guilt and the curiosity of how _unfortunate the Quirkless are for being excluded in the majority popoulation._ The Quirkless are deemed as lower species but no one admits that. No one admits that they walk with humans who are cursed with remaining stagnant. _The world has no use for those who cannot survive._ This is Social Darwinism in a form that makes her head cock to the side, never seen it used this way but in some way. But she remembers the ink sinking into her bones, knows it like the back of her hand _yes_ , Social Darwinism is the theory that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals; now largely discredited, social Darwinism was advocated by Herbert Spencer and others in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and was used to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and reform. There are news flashing in the screen about yet another Quirk powerhouse family disowning little Quirkless children all because of being born. It reminds her of something she has read once upon a time, an age-old family of purebloods resenting children without their gifts.

The world is the same; it has always been. It has never changed despite the years she has not stepped foot in its land. Always the same, even in the ealier years of human life. _Why? Why are we not evolving? Why are we not changing?_ How come they still remain as stagnant as ever?

She just did not see it earlier—this stagnancy and lack of movement. How long has it been like this? _Forever_ , _it_ sobs on her shoulders, tightening _its_ grip around her body enough for it to be painful, _do something._

 _Quirkless._ What if Osamu is Quirkless? What if she—what if she damned a child? What if Osamu is Quirkless? What if he is Quirkless? _Quirkless Quirkless Quirkless Quirkless Quirkless_ —that can't happen. She won't allow it to happen.

Osamu, Quirkless. What if that happens? ( _It will also help Osamu-kun a lot! Studies say that in a classroom where one student gets his Quirk all of the sudden, the other children are suddenly urged to develop their own Quirks too! The development of others sends signals to the brain which pushes Quirk Development a lot faster!_ ) What if? _Breathe. It's going to be okay._ ( _In other words,_ the familiar voice purrs almost desperately, curling hopelessly in the corner, begging and begging to be saved, saving _its_ son, _envy pushes determination. Do it, do it. What if Osamu doesn't have a Quirk? What if he turns out Quirkless like that little green-haired boy who was too close to committing suicide, and Osamu might die_ — _he might die because of your incompetency, do something._ ) What if?

Her voice cracks. "Masaomi," her voice keeps on cracking, and she wonders why.

 **.**

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 **.**

Loving Masaomi is intoxicating. It feels like being at barracades of heaven, seeing the angels sing their sonatas with those high-pitched voices and midtones sounding like the cries of lullabies, watching souls after souls squeal in glee of what they are about to see. It feels like falling and falling, taking note of the appearance of the ground ( _just a little bit more, a little more and_ —) but never feeling your body hit it with the crunching of the bones and the sharp screech of bone and matter. It feels like the tips of your fingers reaching for the edge of the world, closer to the end but too close to the beginning to even glance at it. It feels like being a second from fulfillment and an hour within once upon a time of yet another story failing to meet its happily ever after. Loving Masaomi will never give her the fulfillment she is aching for. He drives her to the edge, mocks her with the taunting figure of the beckoning fingers of falling but Osamu— _Osamu_ is her fullfilment. He is the key granting her pass through the barricades, the bone meeting dirt, the hands finally grasping the end, the happily ever after, and the fall. _Kamisama above_ , Osamu is the fall.

Masaomi will always be her beginning but Osamu will be her end. He will grab her from both sides and pull and _pull and pull_ her apart until she is nothing but a vessel of herself. Osamu will be her downfall, the most beautiful downfall she will ever have. She has never loved anyone as much as she loves Osamu. Osamu, her flesh and blood. (This unexplainable kinship and love takes everything from her, sucking the life out of her and ruining her until she cannot feel anything but the love she worships. Osamu, Osamu, always her beloved, little Osamu.) The evidence of her love for Masaomi. The evidence of her existence and everything she will ever be. _What an honor it is_ , she whispers with the silky sweet falcetto of a newborn mother, _to fall by your hands._

"Tokiwa," Masaomi breathes from above her. She feels everything at once all of the sudden. She feels Masaomi, feels the world, and feels her entire existence. She feels the world end. She feels it be created. _I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end_ —dear God, if You are truly there, _why breathe life in this vessel once more? Why not let me rest?_

She closes her eyes and succumbs to the warmth of Masaomi, the boy she ruined. The boy who could have been everything if she had not just held his hand and let her mouth run off to stories she can never tell to anybody. She ruined Masaomi but they can be broken together, can they? _It's going to be okay_ , he told her once upon a time and she relishes in the comfort he gives her. This is the best way she can live her life and although she is rather rough in too many ways at once, Masaomi is a good man. Cold, but good man. Eyes narrowed-man, frowning man, and sheltered man. Fearful man and loving man. Masaomi is her husband (saying that out loud feels like sunrise) and _oh_ , for better or for worse.

(Maybe it's the desparation or maybe it's the fear—the need for Osamu to belong, _the assurance that everything will be alright_ —she wants that.

She has seen it all happen once, maybe with a tad bit different characters but if this succeeds—

Osamu befriending the half-half boy, her family having ties with the tragic family, the _yuki-onna_ not ending up shackled—if this goes the way she thinks it will be, if the future she is begging to see will happen, if _this is truly happening then_ —)

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"It is?"

"Yes, it is."

Masaomi blinks at her as if he cannot believe what he is seeing, what she is saying, what the world is trying to tell him. His fingers loosen around the phone flashing a message from Tokiwa's resident time marker. The screen screams of how Todoroki Enji completely plans on having his son—the youngest one, the more talented one, the _best child he has_ —associate with the nephew of a hero forgotten by the world. Masaomi does not know what to feel about that, especially when he knows who Todoroki Enji is and what he will be. But he clings to the thought of being early in this tragedy, far too early if you ask him and that has to mean something. He knows that he can somehow help, he can change something. He knows he can. "Did you... did you see something? Something good?" He tries.

Tokiwa breathes out a chuckle. (He thinks she is beautiful when she looks tired, beautiful when she rolls her shoulders as if adjusting the weight of the world pressing down on her body, beautiful when she looks like she is about to cry as her tears glitter with translucent wave of goodbye, beautiful when she is just who he knows she is.) "No, no," she mutters, "of course not."

* * *

 _"Can you feel it?"_

 _He turns his head. He does not know what he expects to see but he supposes it is not this. "Shiori," he mumbles back and his arms feel numb under the weight of the body. Life feels heavy. It feels like the world, feels like everything and nothing at once. He feels her getting heavier and heavier the more she leaves the vessel God has given her. "Shiori, don't sleep."_

 _Shiori is a beautiful girl, he notices too late. Maybe if he noticed her beauty a little earlier, maybe if he actually stopped to meet those dark and squinted eyes of hers, maybe if he smiled more around her_ — _maybe if he decided to push her away, maybe if he never involved her in this mess, maybe, just maybe if Shiori never loved God's greatest messenger that is Juuzou, then she would not have fallen. Shiori is a beautiful girl, maybe not in the way models and idols are but it is the way her overbite nibbles her bottom lip and the way the tips of her ears redden under the attention of the cold and the attention of Juuzou. "Juuzou," she says with the very last breath she can exude and Juuzou does not cry, "can you feel it?"_

 _Why is that only when the soul leaves the body, it is then that the vessel feels heavier? Does the soul carry the weight of the human body? Is that the reason the body feels heavier that it is supposed to be without the soul? Because the soul shoulders everything that the body is going through, picking it up with everything the unfortunate soul has and never leaving it until the body becomes too heavy for the soul to carry? Why is Shiori's body so heavy? How come it weighs so much in his arms?_

 _"Feel what, Shiori?"_

 _"The weight of living," she says with the same voice she uses to call his name; soft and silky with the ounce of love Juuzou has only heard in this very moment. How come he never noticed how beautiful Shiori had been? How come he never noticed her sunken cheeks and sad smiles, her bruised hands and pale skin, her dying, dying body. "The weight of dying." Juuzou wants to apologize, he truly does. He wants to apologize for never loving Shiori who loves him with all her heart regardless of everything that is happening around them. "The weight of my love?"_

 _[...]_

 _Juuzou does not cry even in the very last moment, he never does. Instead, he looks at the sky and thinks of the weight of the world, contemplating how exactly Atlas managed to carry so many bodies and move around despite that heavy feeling of everything at once._

 _"I can," he says to no one, "I can feel it_ — _it's... it's heavy, Shiori."_

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Todoroki Rei remembers her family— _we protect each other;_ liar—selling her to the second most powerful hero of Japan ( _but the most hardworking of them all_ , becomes the unspoken words because look at where that hardwork has lead them to—truly, she is bitter). The first time she sees him, she immediately takes down notes. _He seems like a cruel man_ , had been one of her thoughts. He does not have the usual handsomeness and charm of a traditional Japanese man, the type of charm her family shared, the charm she had—she is a woman of a traditional Japanese family despite their shock of white hair and their unqiuely colored waltz. She is a traditional Japanese woman and she lives to serve her husband, is what her mother and father had told her. Her smiles are as soft as her palms, not hardened by work, only by the vigorous wiping of her tears but still, she is a woman, and the wife of this envious man. Todoroki Enji is handsome in the way that the traditional members of her family are not—he is tall and towering with muscles wrapped around his body like a second skin, which she supposes is true. His eyebrows are furrowed and his red hair—if she looks twice—flickers with the flames of his Quirk, supposedly the hottest flame Quirk _ever_.

Her family with Todoroki Enji (Endeavor is his name more times than not) becomes somewhat similar to the first one. _We protect each other_ , are the words never shared—that much she can be happy about because she can proudly say that her family is not a family of liars. Because despite everything, despite Todoroki Enji being a man enveloped by envy and jealousy and everything in between, Rei can smile and say that Todoroki Enji is not a liar. He never promised a loving family or a happy one. Instead, he promised a family where they will not have to worry about wealth. He can give everything she asks for, anything material and all the jewelry and clothes she can ask for herself. Todoroki Enji never promises something he knows he cannot commit to. And Rei clings to that thought.

Maybe _someday_ , Todoroki Enji can promise her a happy and loving family, the family she has always wanted. That hope lasted for too many years. Touya comes and goes with those beady and weakened eyes, his skin burnt from the power and heat of his Quirk—would have been a great hero, would have been a great boy, if his body was not soft to the touch. Rei cries for him every night, always apologizing to him for not giving him a more powerful body, for letting him be weakened to the point of his father's ire. Fuyumi is a kind girl—one that resembles her in her youth and therefore does Rei fear for her future. Will she be sold too? Will Enji sell her off to a high bidder all for the power of her Quirk? Rei knows she should not have been relieved but she is, when Enji gives her one look and dismisses the beauty of the wintery Quirk. Natsuo is a happy boy, always smiling and grinning and Rei wonders where he picked that up. _Where did you inherit that happiness?_ She wants to ask but she does not. Natsuo is a fighter in the same way Touya is a silent warrior and Fuyumi tries to protect her siblings. Natsuo stands like a fighter, fights like one, and _oh_ , he inherited that perseverance and determination from _you, Enji, did you notice that?_

And then Shouto came. When Rei saw those locks—half-white and the other a shock of red—she cries. She knows a tragic boy when she sees it. This boy has no chance of becoming like Touya, or like Fuyumi, or even like her little fighter, Natsuo. Shouto will never become his siblings. Instead, he will be even more than that. Enji also noticed it. Rei remembers his eyes sparkling when he saw Shouto who, even in his first years, already showed the signs of a powerful Quirk; that evenly divided color, unlike his Natsuo and Fuyumi who only had streaks of Enji's powers, or Touya who inherited the _too powerful_ blue flames, hotter than even Endeavor's. Shouto came and Rei's hopes ended.

Three children pass, and then Shouto comes.

 _"There will be visitors,"_ Enji had stated as if he was talking about how he would leave for job in the next few days, _"Ueda Masaomi and his family."_

When Enji had stated that, Rei did not know what to expect. Enji, after all—or in general, this makeshift family, wannabe family, _not family_ , of theirs rarely to never invited guests. And then she found out; Ueda Masaomi graduated top of his class under Quirk Analysis and is the underclassman of Sakuragaoka, who had been their children's Quirk Doctor ever since they developed their Quirks, an old acquaintance of Enji and the only one who can actually talk to him without stuttering and fishing for more cash. Sakuragaoka the incredibly disturbing man—Rei remembers the way he looked at her; all-knowing dabbed with an almost pitiful mocking. Ueda Masaomi's wife had once been known as Imagawa Tokiwa, younger sister to the forgotten hero, Imagawa Toushirou or mostly known as the _Bone Hero: Spine_ , who now works as a teacher in Ketsubutsu High School.

And they have a child, a child who they will bring to Rei's abode. Should she introduce Natsuo, Fuyumi, and Touya? Why are they even here?

When Rei sees finally sees them, she does not know what she expected but perhaps, it had not been this. Ueda Masaomi is a handsome boy, the traditional type, definitely with that black hair and icy blue eyes—almost resembling legends of the handful male counterpart of the yuki-onna. Rei supposes she is familiar with it, the way men wear their uniforms everywhere and Ueda-san is not different from them; over his dark turtle-neck is his labcoat which almost reaches his knees. Beside him is his wife— _striking_ , she thinks and is immediately reminded of the hero who used to wander the screens and news day after day—similar silvery hair, only a tad bit darker, and those eyes— _amber_ , too amber for her liking. Ueda Tokiwa suits Masaomi so well, the tiredness and elegance suits her so well—yet another long-sleeved shirt tucked in her skirt. _And then_ —there comes the child.

 _Ueda Osamu_.

"You must be the Ueda family," Rei greets with a small smile when they are finally invited in their home— _house, truly_ , "I'm Todoroki Rei, Enji-san's wife."

Tokiwa is the first one to smile back, and Rei thinks how she sees nothing of Tokiwa's on Osamu aside from their shared coloring. "Ueda Tokiwa," she introduces herself in return.

(Rei remembers being round with Touya when she was but twenty years old, fresh out from a short college time and fresh from marriage with Todoroki Enji. She hears that Tokiwa and Masaomi are twenty-six years old and received the beautiful Osamu when they had been both twenty-two— _what brave children these two are_ , she remembers thinking when she learned of that fact from the knowing Sakuragaoka during one of their terribly few meetings, _to choose to become parents in such a young age._ Don't get her wrong. When Touya came to be, Rei had been the happiest woman in the planet but she never planned to be a mother at such a young age. But still, when she held Touya in her arms, she felt like the most beautiful woman to walk this land. Touya made her feel special, her first and eldest child, her dear son. _I'm sorry, Touya_ , she thinks.)

Masaomi meets her gaze for solid moment before he nods, smiling enough for it to be polite. "Ueda Masaomi," he says and gestures to their angel, "Osamu, introduce yourself."

Osamu blinks twice with those amber eyes of his, glowing like a thousand suns. He nods shyly from behind his mother's skirt, eyes wide and staring intently to Rei, almost as if he can ruin her with his innocence and purity alone. _Rei melts._ "I'm Osamu," he bows shallowly and peaks from behind his hair, "Rei-san."

(Rei has never been so envious in her life.)

There is something genuine and immaculate about children that Rei cannot explain. Maybe it is how they need to be taught everything before they can step out of this world, or how they cling to their mother's skirt with tears in the corners of their eyes—when Rei feels Shouto tug her skirt, peeking from behind those mismatched locks of his, her heart swells. She feels like crying all over again ( _but you are a mother and mothers don't cry; they have to be strong and resilient for their children_ —you failed the others, are you going to fail your youngest too—) but she instead smiles at him and gestures to little Osamu who looks more and more like Masaomi-san the more that Rei looks at him. To think that at first glance, all Rei had seen was Tokiwa-san on Osamu's face but those naturally squinty eyes and frown are missing in Tokiwa's almost droopy ones. She maintains her smile, because she is a mother.

"Shouto, say hi to Osamu-kun," she encourages and keeps the confusion inside for a moment.

 _Why are the Ueda family here? Does Enji-san want Osamu-kun to play with Shouto? Are they even supposed to interact with one another? What does he expect me to do?_ Rei is a good mother, and being a good mother means being a good wife. (No matter how much she wants to run away and never come back, no matter how much she wants to get rid of this wannabe love—Rei will always stay.)

Osamu gives Shouto one look before deepening his frown and if they had been in any other situation, Rei would have had relaxed at how much Osamu was trying hard to be his father. Before she can say something, she tenses. "Ueda."

Rei watches Tokiwa tense along with her, the young woman's gleaming eyes running to Todoroki Enji's sudden arrival. She catches the way Masaomi-san's hand reaches to his wife's, wrapping their fingers together almost in assurance.

 _Right._

Todoroki Rei has truly never felt so envious.

 **.**

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 **.**

Tokiwa has only seen Todoroki Enji from the screens and a handful of imaginations from Masaomi's complaints—always about prideful flame heroes, stubborn flame heroes, but Tokiwa remembers squinting in confusion when Masaomi adds in hesitation, "Sakuragaoka-senpai said...—I don't know what to make of it but he said Endeavor's not a bad man." And Tokiwa almost snorts at that statement. _Endeavor had been one of the most hated characters_ —it's because you see them as _characters!_ —Tokiwa wants to get away from this home, despite loving the oriental arrangement of it. _It_ has always been in love with things like these, things that still remember the historical significance of everything. She feels the way her weight sinks against the wooden floors, and the multiple sliding doors from each corner of the room and she feels herself slowly falling in love with the state of this house.

 _Maybe it means something_ , she thinks. Endeavor had been visiting Todoroki Rei secretly during her confinement, dropping by and never showing his face because he had known it will simply worsen her situation. And not to mention the incident after his battle where he received the scar— _how did he receive that again from what battle I don't remember_ —from a man whose name she cannot grasp. Endeavor showed remorse and a need for atonement. Does that make Endeavor a good man? There _must_ be a reason why he wanted to be a hero in a first place and a hero is an ally of justice, a representation of hope and kindness. Is Endeavor a good man? Good men don't do what he does. _And bad men don't do what does too_ —so what does that make Endeavor?

Things like abuse and inflicting massive psychological trauma—Tokiwa does not know if things like that can even be atoned. Endeavor had done many things in his life that Tokiwa was absolutely disgusted of. _He was driven by jealousy, envy_ —a terrible fear of losing, of remaining stagnant, of not being able to move forward, of not being good enough—Endeavor had been a cruel man, very much so. Does he deserve his redemption? Can he be atoned? How can you interact with someone who slapped his wife and grooms his children in a way that is borderline abuse and neglect? How can you face someone who you know will do everything and anything just to reach his goals?

Is that— _isn't that kind of villainous?_

 _It_ sighs against her cheeks, arms curling around her and leaning _its_ supposed weight down her body. _"It hasn't happened yet," it_ whispers and she freezes, _"right now, he hasn't hit his wife a single time, Shouto isn't being trained just yet. Do you know what his only crime is?"_

She has a feeling it is yet to be abuse, whatever his crime is. Does he even know what he is doing? Does he know what he is molding his family to be? If Todoroki Touya is truly the Dabi, one of the powerful villains in this fairy tale, then whatever is truly happening behind these doors are worse than the things Tokiwa has seen. Does Enji know how to raise children?

 _"His crime,"_ the scent of ashes, freezing wind, weeping children, _"is neglect."_

Seeing Todoroki Enji for the first time makes Tokiwa feel like she is facing the sun itself. She can feel the heat roll off his body despite the meters away from them, the same way she can feel the cold seep through Rei's skin. Todoroki Enji feels like a furnace.

"Todoroki-san," Masaomi greets casually, and Tokiwa envies his experience with Endeavor, how he can act so easily around the intimidating man, "this is my wife, Ueda Tokiwa, and my son, Osamu."

When Endeavor sends a look to Osamu, Tokiwa does not know what to do but _it_ reminds her of who she is in this world; a writer, sister to the retired Bone Hero, mother of Osamu— _it_ tells her who she used to be and if there is anything she is good at, it is adjusting. She is clairvoyant. She has a Quirk and she is prepared to use it. "Todoroki-san," she smiles and imagines Enji as yet another reader of her works, yet another version of Okamoto, only taller and wider, a little more intimidating and definitely more masculine. The thoughts almost make her chuckle but it definitely did make her relax. _Relax. Relax._ "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

She drops _finally_ like a bomb and by the way Masaomi sighs, he already knows what it means. He does not like this plan but Tokiwa knows he has no choice; if he wants to help the Todoroki Family ( _don't you want to help them, Tokiwa?_ ) then this is what needs to happen. "Tokiwa's been seeing you in her visions for the past few days," he elaborates and subtly hints to Endeavor that this must be why they decided to finally accept the so-called 'social interaction for the betterment of their children's Quirks'—which Masaomi thinks is a stupid simplification of Endeavor's desire for Shouto to not become hesitant of his Quirk and accept it with his whole heart.

"Vision," Enji grunts, "a Clairvoyant."

Tokiwa watches Rei smile at her as she serves them tea. And as much as Tokiwa loves the low-table and sitting in seiza style with the traditional atmosphere surrounding them, Tokiwa thinks that can be pushed aside for the moment. _If this works out as planned_ —"Yes," she tilts her head to Rei in gratitude for the tea, "I'm afraid I inherited nothing of my parents' inclination to metal." _A little something. A little acknowledgement that Tokiwa knows they were only invited because of their association with a once-popular hero._ She smiles kindly.

Enji turns his gaze to Masaomi, who immediately engages him in a conversation concerning Quirk Development and Shouto's status. While Tokiwa likes to think she is not as socially inept as Masaomi had been when he was in middle school _(when you had not ruined his life just yet_ ), she can read faces well enough. When Masaomi brought up Shouto's Quirk Development and the unique division of his Quirks as half-cold and half-hot, she notices how Rei slouches in a way that only those observing her can see. She finds out that Rei becomes round with Touya in her _very_ early twenties and while the following births of her children did nothing much to the strength of her body, she is still weakened by the stress this household puts on her.

It takes time for Masaomi and Enji's 'strictly-business' conversation to end and when it does, Tokiwa breaks the silence first, and _yes,_ she has rehearsed this in her head multiples of times and even considered the upcoming complications that may happen after dropping the bomb but Tokiwa thinks it is alright. She has planned this out already.

She smiles. "Shouto-kun has a bright future, doesn't he?" Rei looks like she is about to break; Enji's chest puffs.

Because while Enji can never be a good father, he takes pride on those he creates. Tokiwa still does not like him. Maybe it is true that she adored the hero Endeavor who had been in his earlly twenties but when the hero All Might entered the scene and captured the title of Number One Hero, Tokiwa never saw the glow that the once-charismatic Endeavor once had.

"And the Ice Quirk he inherited from you, Rei-san, is truly beautiful!" Tokiwa chirps and clasps her hands together. _Gestures make words look more genuine._ "I thought, with his appearance, he would have had a Fire Quirk as well."

Endeavor snaps his eyes to her. Rei straightens her back, confused. "He does," the Number Two Hero corrects her.

 _Hook._

"Oh?" Tokiwa makes sure to blush at her so-called mistake. "Is that so? It's just that—all I have been seeing of him is his Ice Quirk, never his Fire."

 _Line._

The obvious distaste paints Endeavor's eyes, and what a skillful artist the man is to express such emotions with ease. "Then your Quirk has failed you," and most days, Tokiwa would have had been insulted. But _this_ is not her Quirk working, not even her intuition. _This_ is something more authentic. Real. She has seen it happen before her very eyes and there is absolutely no one in the world that can tell her that what she has seen is not real. She has everything written down, and while her memory may weign, the truth will never do so.

Endeavor excuses himself with no exchanged words, only the sound of a sliding door—almost as if he is emphasizing how this place is his territory. _Watch your mouth, girl._ Tokiwa knows that, she does, but she cannot help but add, with the dip of her head and an almost mocking tone, she calls:

"Oh, but Todoroki-san, my visions are always right."

 _Sinker._

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 **(1)** so you must be wondering what took this so long; well, i never had the time and i always had no idea how to write these scenes. i really hate introductory chapters. i can't wait for osamu to actually meet shouto and for the canon events to slowly change.

 **(2)** tokiwa isn't a good liar by any means. she just knows people like endeavor, since she is somewhat like that as well. when people are blinded by their ambition and emotions, it ends up pretty easy manipulating them. also, i have no idea how to write endeavor, like i honestly have no clue how to write him but i somehow managed to survive writing tokiwa's interaction with endeavor, and i love writing rei! in the next chapter, we will be seeing what happened _before_ the ueda family arrived to the todoroki household and the so-called contingency plan, as well as what really convinced tokiwa to meet the fam.

 **(3)** i think tokiwa is the type to, while not hate or look down to quirkless kids, she will think that being quirkless is unfortunate. i mean, she tried her best to adapt to the society and she knows what will happen if someone is quirkless, you know. that just sucks. so she's also afraid for osamu; what if he doesn't have a quirk? so next chapter, we will be focusing more on shouto and osamu :D reviews are highly appreciated!


	4. the rabbit and the turtle

**hinatayvonne:** hope it wasnt ooc oof—

 **xenocanaan:** thank you!

 **dodemgm:** oof—thank you! im glad you like it! && i guess things are going to be less tragic after the todoroki arc :DD

 **uchihae:** dude you flatter me too much ksksks

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 _tokiwa loves and loves and loves_

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( _This_ Masaomi does not graduate from middle school with top honors. He is too distracted by the enigmatic stories that his classmate has. _Do you know Imagawa Tokiwa?_ —that is the classmate she is talking about. At first, all he knows about her is how she is the younger sister of a Pro-Hero, one of the few heroes who did not graduate from UA and Masaomi supposes that is why the Bone Hero is not as popular as others. He also knows that Tokiwa only hangs out with a certain group of friends but is popular enough to gain some admirers. He kind of is like that too but everything somehow changes when the world announces that he needs to learn more about Imagawa Tokiwa and those eerie amber eyes of hers.

 _This_ Masaomi ends up distracted from his schoolwork, abandoning the baseball team for something more with a sheepish smile and with his hand reaching to the back of his head to show how guilty he is. _He really isn't_. He finds himself meeting up with Tokiwa in coffee shop after coffee shop, rambling about Pro-Heroes and a future too clear to be untrue. He remembers exactly when they started calling each other by their given names. It had been the same time when they decided they would be partners in this situation. Masaomi does not know whether he suggested the idea because he wanted to be involved, wanted to have a meaning in this world aside from simply _being here_ [what's wrong with just being here?— _everything_ ], or because he genuinely wants to be there for Tokiwa who has been alone for far too long. He never asks himself why and Tokiwa does not too, and instead, they thread their fingers together like lovers do. It takes them a while to realize everything in between.

 _This_ Masaomi gives his everything to Tokiwa's strange predicament. He still manages to get higher than average scores, mostly because of the guilt flickering in Tokiwa's eyes, but more often that not, people find Masaomi with Tokiwa: in coffee shops, parks, libraries, personal rooms— _are they dating?_ His chest is overwhelmed by too many emotions to name and he absolutely adores it. He wraps his arms around Tokiwa when she is sad and happy and lonely and needy, and Tokiwa does the same. Something that he finds out about Tokiwa is how easy she can love. She gets attached too easily, and when she does, she finds it hard to let go. Which why Masaomi guides her through everything, Masaomi loves her through everything and of course—

 _This_ Masaomi marries _young_ , gets a child _young_ , and everything seems so rushed but _if not now, then when?_ He does not regret anything. He loves Tokiwa. He loves Osamu. He loves them all.

In another world, Masaomi graduates with top honors. He is not distracted by everything and his peers applaud him for being a baseball player as well. His friends adore him, he gets admirers. _Do you know Imagawa Tokiwa?_ —ah, Imagawa-san? Masaomi only talked to _Imagawa-san_ a handful of times and most of them had been passing conversations. He focuses on his scores, his parents' smiles, and the future that is too scary for someone like him. He is not like those neon-glazed kisses. He cannot stand out like those with flashy quirks and those with 'hero' plastered across their foreheads. His doctor suggests for him to be a policeman _because that quirk can help lots of people_ , and he turns it down. [This is only one of the few things similar with him and _this_ Masaomi; selfish and ] "I want to be like you," he— _they_ —say.

And he does become just like his former doctor, only better, younger—in another world, Masaomi marries at thirty, with an emptiness he cannot describe.)

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The elementary school feels almost like the Todoroki Family's mansion. (Osamu still feels strange seeing a mansion right before his eyes. He lives in an aparment with his mother and father—a classmate [technically not a friend because as much as his mother and father want him to have one or two, none of them piques his interest] who visited once said that their apartment is really big, followed by a question asking if his parents are rich. Osamu didn't know what to answer. Their apartment suits them perfectly with three to four rooms and two bathrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a dining room. It does not take him a while to find out that his father's job, despite being a newbie, pays amazingly, and her mother's books are nothing to sniff at either. Osamu doesn't think he's rich. His classmate says otherwise.) Back in school, the teachers have many things to say about him and maybe he inherits it from his father whose eyes are narrowed and his natural aversion towards everything that he does not care about, but Osamu just doesn't really care.

They say his mother has odd opinions with her books, how she talks about villains with ease, and how her main characters are twisted and not heroic and not main character- _ish_ and they wonder about what kind of child she has raised. Osamu has never read her books, not even her drafts because his mother never allowed him to. They also have something to say about his father, more on the relationship of his parents—they got married too young, got a child too young, and _look Ueda-san just graduated from college!_ —and wait, _are they still supported by their parents?_

Osamu has never thought his parents are young, having nothing to compare them too. Little Osamu, sheltered, protected. Little Osamu, loved by dearest _Mama_ and _Papa_. All he knows and needs to know about his parents is that his mother likes to keep him close, and when his father smiles, he feels like grinning back too. He hears people—strangers—worrying about him sometimes, saying that little Osamu doesn't have enough friends, barely have any friends and Osamu supposes he never feels like he needs friends. Mama is always at home, writing and writing, and Papa always manages to finds time for him. His grandparents adore him too and besides, all the other kids think he's strange anyway.

This is the first time Osamu has seen another family this up close. Is this what a normal family is supposed to look like? Is this the type of family people compare _his_ own family to?

Before arriving in the Todoroki Household, his mother told him that there are four children there and one of them is Todoroki Shouto who is supposedly his age. The first thing his mother tells him is to not comment about the odd appearance Shouto has and really, because of that, he expected to see some horrendous appearance but instead, he sees a boy who looks as human as he is; with his hair parted in the middle, eyes mismatched, and he looks like any other boy next door. He has seen stranger faces back in elementary school. Some kids had horns and tails, some had admittedly terrifying side-effects because of their Quirks. Shouto looks normal.

It doesn't take a while for the adults to make them leave the room, and the way Shouto's father looks at him—turquoise eyes and something deep beyond the ocean kind of emotions; Mama says that Endeavor is a great _Pro-Hero_ , and does not elaborate further—makes him expect that he will jump in excitement. While Endeavor is not necessarily his most favorite hero, he is still somewhere around his second or third favorite. Endeavor, the hero who doesn't care about fanservice or anything fake that boosts his popularity (when Papa brings it up, his eyes open), only about his _job, job, job, job, and job_ —he looks up at Endeavor so much but seeing him in front of his small body, just a mere child before a hero's normal day—furrowed eyebrows and crossed arms, not costumes or anything like that. Before him is Todoroki Enji and not Endeavor but it seems so similar. He feels the heavy heat and the cold at the same time. He expects to see _warmth_ with Todoroki Enji, something different from Endeavor, but it's still the same.

Is he supposed to feel relieved that his hero is not fake? That everything is not for a stunt? Or disappointed because Endeavor as a _Papa_ is different from his Papa.

Shouto looks uncomfortable as much as he is, maybe even more so because Osamu has been told once or twice by his paternal grandparents that he looks exactly like his father, all intimidating eyes when he was much younger. While his mother told him, before arriving to this mansion, that he did not need to befriend Shouto but his father said otherwise. _"Osamu and Shouto are a little similar,"_ his father told him, a hand on his shoulder and itching to pat his head, _"your mama would never tell you but_ — _but I know that she thinks it would help a lot if you befriend Shouto."_

Osamu really doesn't want to talk to Shouto. It's one thing if Papa wants him to do something but it's a whole other thing when Mama wants him to do the same thing to. Mama doesn't like making him do things so much, something that his grandparents of both sides dislike. So for once, Papa and Mama agree on making him do the same thing, something that has never happened and it makes him feel excited, truth to be told. And if befriending Shouto will make them happy, then, why not?

It takes him a moment to gather everything and actually tap Shouto's shoulders. And maybe it's because his Papa has a thing about liars, and maybe it's because Mama adapted to that mindset too. Something about liars make him feel disgusted. So when he taps Shouto's shoulders, he says the first thing in his mind.

"Mama and Papa said to be your friend, so let's be friend."

(Years later, Shouto finds himself doing the same.)

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

Todoroki Rei is not entirely overwhelmed by the Ueda Family. Tokiwa, regardless of the controversies concerning her books and the seemingly innocent facade she shows to Enji who had left the house for hero business, is very easy to talk to. The moment Enji leaves the room, Rei watches how Tokiwa's shoulder slouches and sighs. The way Masaomi glares at her, casually tapping her back to emphasize how disrespectful her sudden change is—everything about their interaction is foreign to Rei. Her own family has never interacted like that; her mother and father had not been necessarily in love when they got married and Rei does not really expect to fall in love when they announced that she will be marrying Todoroki Enji. She never did. Rei is docile and kind, and she has known her place since the beginning. She learns not to expect much even before she met Todoroki Enji and the children she has with him.

Seeing how the two of them, Tokiwa and Masaomi, interact makes her want to hope for something, perhaps something _kinder_.

Her thoughts are interrupted when Tokiwa breaks the silence. "Rei-san," her voice is not as high-pitched as Rei expects and for some reason, it comforts her more, "aren't you going to ask something about Shouto-kun's development? Enji-san's been hogging Masaomi the whole time so I suppose you never had the chance to pitch in a question—" Tokiwa jolts when Masaomi nudges her side. " _What?_ "

Masaomi sighs. "I apologize, Rei-san," he tilts his head as a small sign of embarrassment, "Tokiwa isn't really known for her filter. I suppose it's my fault."

Rei remembers hearing from Enji about their Quirks; Osamu just turned four, so his Quirk really isn't expected to show up anytime soon and Rei can still hear the resounding implication that Enji drops ( _he better has a Quirk_ ), while Masaomi's Quirk can make somebody immediately tell the truth whether they want it or not with something as simple as skin contact. Tokiwa's Quirk is much more complicated though. Clairvoyance can imply many things—the ability to see spirits, see things further than any human can, but Tokiwa's Quirk leans to the ability to see the future. Rei wants to know how far she can see, if Shouto using only his ice side will actually happen.

Tokiwa seems like an anomaly. Rei knows the Imagawa Family but of course, not personally. Everybody who has seen how the Bone Hero bloomed knows as much. There are barely any heroes out there who are not from UA. Either they get into an unfortunate accident—because _their training is not enough_ —or simply because they are not as popular as UA graduates. Everybody expected so much of Imagawa Toushirou whose metallic bones pop out of his skin so easily without blood staining his silvery hero costume and his brilliant smile. That is until he lost a limb from an infamous villain, and now teaches in his former school, Ketsubutsu High, and maybe that is why there are barely any heroes that did not graduate from UA. She wonders where Tokiwa's Quirk comes from because according to interviews during when the Bone Hero: Spine had been popular, his— _their_ —parents could bend spoons and have stronger bodily resistance, and then Tokiwa's Clairvoyance comes in all of the sudden.

Rei smiles politely at the two as she refills their tea. "Oh, no, no," she shakes her head, "it's alright, Masaomi-san. I suppose I was just surprised."

Masaomi chuckles back. "Tokiwa's just excited, you see. She loves traditional things," he explains briefly, "she even has lots of old books at home."

 _How endearing_ , Rei thinks as she glances at Tokiwa whose eyes makes its way to the single picture frame by a nearby table. Rei's smile feels cold on her own lips, seeing that the single picture does not have Shouto nor does it have Enji in it, only herself and the three other kids she has failed. Touya looks so pale in that picture. "I find myself really interested with Natsuki Souseki's works, actually," Rei shares hesitantly. Before she can ask if they would like more snacks, she meets the amber vibrance of Tokiwa's eyes.

"Natsume Souseki!?" Tokiwa exclaims, almost childlike and Masaomi grimaces. "Really? That's—I don't think it's really surprising. What have you been reading, Rei-san? I'm kind of surprised that other people are also reading classic books like that. It's from the twentieth century, you know. Kind of—kind of far away."

Rei does not notice the meloncholy behind her voice and instead, returns her words with similar excitement. "I've been reading _Kokoro_ , and I've been liking it so far," she says.

(Masaomi does not bother pointing out how her shoulders are relaxing, how her smile is becoming more and more genuine, and neither does he point out how Tokiwa is gradually adapting to Rei's presence. He expects it to last longer, the coldness that Tokiwa gives to Rei. He never understood why Tokiwa actively says that she does not like Rei. But before arriving to the Todoroki household, Masaomi had grabbed both of her shoulders and made her look in his eyes. He hates it when Tokiwa gets paranoid and scared. The Tokiwa he knows has no filter and knows how to dance between the fine line of love and lies. He wonders if that is why he ended up getting enthralled by her once enigmatic waltz. _"They're not characters, Tokiwa,"_ he said, _"they're real, live people who suffers and cries and also smiles. So please, don't just_ — _just pass them off as some kind of two-dimensional characters. They're real. You're not the only one whose authentic here_ _."_

He lowered his head, leaning against Tokiwa's shaking shoulders. How long is she going to be afraid? How long is she going to think she's alone? Is that how shallow he seems to her? Does she not think that he is as real as her? Is she still trapped in the mindset that everything is just a fantasy? _"Please, Tokiwa,"_ he begged, _"look at me."_

 _"I'm sorry,"_ she stammered and reached for the picture frame beside them, _"of course I know you're real. Of course. I just_ — _don't worry. I know. I love Osamu and you, you know. I'm just_ — _you_ — _"_

 _"I know,"_ he insisted, _"I know."_

And that was okay.)

Masaomi watches fondly as Tokiwa begins drilling Rei about the different kinds of twentieth and twenty-first century she is unbelievable fond of. After all, once Tokiwa starts, she can barely stop. "You've heard about Dazai Osamu and Akutagawa Ryuunosoke, right? Well, of course you've have! If you already started with the classics and I don't doubt that you've gone to them already," she rambles and trails off, arms flying everywhere when she grabs her phone and shows another author to Rei who seems very interested at where their conservation is going.

He smiles. "Well, Rei-san, I think I should go check on the kids, right? Who knows what they're doing right now," he excuses himself and Tokiwa glares at him for the insuation that Shouto and Osamu are actually becoming close friends. _Ah_. He never really managed to tell Tokiwa that he explicitly told Osamu to go ahead and befriend Osamu, did he? He hopes they will not end up fighting when they get home. Fighting with Tokiwa is a tiring, after all, especially with her paranoia. (But Tokiwa's just like that. Masaomi knows her like he knows the back of his hand.) Tokiwa, after all, only agreed with associating with Shouto and possibly finding a reason to leave when Osamu develops his Quirk but Masaomi wants something more than that.

He wants to help. (The childlike dream within him who wants to be a hero knocks on his door.) Even butterfly wings can cause hurricanes in the other side of the world.

"Masaomi-san!" He stops on his tracks when Rei calls for him. He tilts his head in acknowledgement. "If it's not a bother, can I ask for a favor?"

 _Even butterfly wings_ —

"Tokiwa-san asked if I have some questions for my children's development, and Masaomi-san works under Sakuragaoka-san."

— _can cause hurricanes in the other side of the world._

"Will you check on my eldest son?"

 **.**

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 **.**

" _As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create a sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abbys of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically_ — _on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke up from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone_ ," Tokiwa quotes unconciously to herself as she lets two children settle on her lap. The Todoroki Mansion's porch seemed so lonely at first glance but she squinted and had found herself staring at Shouto tripping over nothing and staring at Osamu who had been staring back at little Shouto with the same intensity. She still cannot forget the dread tapping her shoulder when she saw them acting like friends (close enough to be remembered in the future and just thinking about Osamu mingling with the freckled boy and the sad blonde array of explosions scares her) but for some reason, she cannot find it in herself to become angry. Is it pity?

When Rei asked Masaomi to check on her eldest son—and there is only _one eldest son_ she can think of; the mysterious Todoroki Touya whose Quirk is a lot more powerful than Enji's (blue fire is hotter, warmer, capable of _burning and defeating those flames of Mister Hero over there_ —Dabi?), whose body is fragile, as shown in the various images of how the second youngest child of the Todoroki family is a lot taller than little Touya—Tokiwa did not feel dread nor did she feel the need to run because aren't they getting involved a little too much? _But isn't that what you wanted? You wanted to get involved and help them, you're just being hypocrital now._ Masaomi met her gaze that same time they both saw the silent plea in Rei's eyes, a hint of defiance against _Mister Flame Hero somewhere wandering around the streets_ , and Tokiwa did not know what to do.

Is she really going to forsake a child for her own safety? _She can_ but—she could have but—she has a son now. Osamu is her child, and Touya is Rei's child. What is this?

 _Are you really pitying them?_

No, no, it's not pity.

Something deeper than pity, something more terrifying than pity because _what happens if they ask for help and no one helps Osamu?_ ("Aren't you going to say anything? What the hell!? Don't look at me like that!") Tokiwa dislikes this feeling. She has always hated fear.

"Where's that from, Ueda-san?" Shouto asks curiously from her side, still absolutely enthralled by the way Tokiwa's hair matches Osamu's perfectly.

Looking at Shouto without his scar is strange. Tokiwa almost wants to laugh: a canon character, one of the main characters of this disastrous playground she is forced to be in, is leaning against her right side like a child. _He is a child_. It feels so foreign, having something you thought was a dream become something more authentic than yourself. Osamu, from her other side, seems too close to taking a nap. _Osamu_. She always feels overwhelmed by emotions whenever she is reminded that Osamu is here, a little boy she created from nothing and has become her everything. The thought of Osamu makes her spine chill. The things she will do to make sure Osamu is safe—she has never felt a deeper love such as this. Masaomi is different and looking at the way Masaomi sees Osamu, Tokiwa knows he feels the same.

"Just from a book I read not too long ago," Tokiwa answers vaguely, "and you can call me _Tokiwa-san_. Osamu is also Ueda, you know."

Shouto's cheeks turn red upon that realization and Tokiwa sighs.

 _Everyone's still kids._

Tokiwa has seen All Might once or twice before and while she thought that seeing someone as big time as he is must be rare, she is completely wrong. _All Might is everywhere_ , completely different from Endeavor who just drops in to defeat the villain, glance at the crowd if there are any injured or any more runaway bad guys, and leaves. And perhaps, that is what makes All Might seem unreal. ( _It_ remembers a scene from a failure of a movie, something _it_ watched mainly because of the gigantic expectations set upon the film. This scene gave _it_ chills, an emotion _it_ cannot exactly describe but the awe and the curiosity is still there. The hero stands between the crowds and crowds of people begging for even a single touch of his glory, begging and crying and continuously pleading for his arrival. The hero becomes a god, and when the hero died, humanity lost its god. She dislikes what All Might represents. Todoroki Enji is not a good man but _Endeavor_ is a great Pro-Hero.)

She remembers, from lost memories, how everyone had laughed at Todoroki Enji's road to redemption— _it_ laughs, amused at his attempts.

Isn't that— _isn't that at least nice?_ At least the man is trying, at least he knows his faults. True, everything is wrong, everything about that family is wicked and twisted but _at least he knows._ At least he is trying.

Tokiwa glances at the scarless face Shouto has.

It's strange but—

He seems to suit this look better than the other.

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 **(1)** shortest chapter i've written for this fic because i literally have nothing to add. and actually, i was planning a huge time skip after this and by huge, i mean present time skip kind of huge. i just wanted to show ya'll the changes *cough* and the not changes *cough cough cough cough cOUGH* that happened and just explain how and why it happened along the way because then it would be msyterious and interesting, right? bc if i just full-blown showed everything then it would be kind of boring and would drag on w _aaaaaaaaaa_ y longer than everyone would like. so is the huge time skip okay? or nah? bc i would totally love to hear your opinion on this bc i'm having a super hard time deciding.

 **(2)** also masaomi meets touya (who is dabi in this fic bc if touya isnt dabi istg) in this chapter + some osamu & shouto short bonding time. tokiwa is contemplating some things and foreshadowing quotes AHEM AHEM AHEM & really tokiwa needs to calm herself but yeah.

 **(3)** also you all may think tokiwa is rather hypocrital and she is. she originally plans to shove osamu & shouto together for only a short period of time, at least until osamu develops his quirk while masaomi genuinely wants to help the todo fam. tokiwa still wants to avoid them and its mostly because she still hasnt adapted to the whole 'real' thing since masaomi technically isnt even a canon character, so is osamu, so she isnt into the whole not 2d kind of feel, despite the quirks surrounding her but to be fair, she _is_ a writer and she doesn't actively use her quirk as much as everyone thinks. she still mostly feels its bc of her past memories. she has a really hard time differentiating her quirk from her past memories which only worsens the situation but masaomi is there to help.


End file.
